To Twist The Crimson Threads
by flairina
Summary: ...though honestly, it was more of a yank. The Nerima Wrecking Crew successfully baffled Honnouji. It really only seems right that Honnouji return the favor. Sequel to Insanity Squared.
1. Ready? Steady? No!

AN: I told you I'd get around to it eventually.

* * *

Water. All around him, water.

Ranma grimaced as he gazed at the wide, blue expanse through the tinted window on his right. He'd known this school was situated in the middle of Tokyo Bay ever since Satsuki's letter had arrived, but somehow it hadn't really sunk in that he'd agreed to live in a place surrounded on every side by his personal nemesis until he was actually looking at it. Water already practically rolled uphill to get him, and he'd just made it _that_ much easier for it. Great.

...in contrast, the vehicle's second occupant didn't seem to have any particular issue with this. One might even say that such worries never so much as crossed his mind.

"Oy Pops, would ya _stop_ that?"

Genma looked up from the five star steak meal he'd been loudly devouring on the opposite side of the royal looking stretch limo, which they'd found waiting exclusively for them upon arriving at the bay. It said a lot about what awaited them that they'd likely only be in here for all of ten minutes (at least, assuming this limo at SOME point would start moving faster than an average toddler's walking speed), and yet there was a literal banquet laid out inside. One containing what looked to be enough food to satisfy a moderately sized humpback whale, at that.

"It's a short trip my boy! Eat while you can!" Genma declared, a bit of food spilling out of his mouth as he moved on to his next course.

Ranma snorted, trying to ignore his father's loud, continuous pigging out as he looked out the back window, where the Tendo vehicle- slightly less showy, but screaming **RICH** no less than his own transportation- was following just behind them. He wondered how they felt about all this. Nabiki was probably drooling all over the seats at the thought of all the money waiting for them. Though then again, maybe not, since he was pretty sure that would hurt the resell value of the vehicle if she ever somehow got her hands on it.

He thought back briefly to two days ago, on the afternoon of the day the letters arrived. Nabiki had, as expected, eventually managed to "persuade" Akane to take up Satsuki's offer, and somehow cajoled her younger sister into bringing her along as well. This, along with a little added pressure from the mercenary girl, had resulted in Soun caving like a piece of wet tissue paper and deciding to join them, the man unable to stand the idea of being away from even one of his daughters for any sustained period of time longer than the average school day. Which of course meant Kasumi had been subsequently asked to tag along by all three of them, ostensibly because no one wanted to leave her alone in a completely empty house, but in reality at least two-thirds of the persuaders were probably more concerned with having someone around to cook who wouldn't unwittingly poison them. Ranma still wondered when Soun would work out that this plan essentially left the Tendo Compound under the care of _Happosai_ , once the old lech inevitably made his way back to Nerima again, and what the man's reaction would be when he did.

A chopstick came flying at the side of the pigtailed teen's neck from the corner of his vision. His pop's idea of keeping him on his toes, probably. He idly snatched it out of the air and sent it back, spearing it into a meatball.

Ranma had to admit, he was curious as to what exactly Nabiki had done to get everyone on board. Not only had she convinced both her sister and her father in near record time, she'd also convinced the lingerie squadron to lay off for a while until the money to pay them back could be obtained. Apparently, something about his city council position and how it looked taken alongside his association with Genma had been mentioned to Soun, and Akane had probably caved to some "gentle" blackmail. But Ranma still couldn't figure out what Nabiki could have said to convince the Panty Police to turn around and leave. Hopefully not something that would come back to haunt HIM later.

The recently speared meatball curved towards Ranma's head, set on a collision course with his ear. Grumbling, he turned and chomped down, snagging it between his teeth and chewing while spitting the chopstick out like a dart before turning back away.

The cursed martial artist pressed his forehead against the window, feeling unusually subdued for once. His original plan had been to go find Satsuki and get the whole story about the apparently rather serious "end of the world" issue the moment he arrived, but he'd realized once they'd gotten closer to the bay that he had absolutely no idea where to find her. So when the chauffeur had insisted that they be shown to where they'd be living for the next however-long, he'd agreed for lack of any better ideas, despite it sounding like the worst one Ranma had heard in weeks. Not only did he not particularly care about the "luxury" awaiting them, but the sense of foreboding that had been steadily increasing in him for the last couple days now had no outlet whatsoever. There was no way to use it for productive purposes, no goal to funnel it towards. All he could do for the moment was... wait.

Peeling himself away from the glass, Ranma leaned back in his seat and sighed. On the plus side of things, at least he wouldn't have to deal with the fiancees for a while. Only one of them would even be around for the foreseeable future, and as such he'd resolved that THAT mess was on hold until after all this apocalypse stuff was done. Not that he was particular keen on "resolving" it even before all this given what such would entail, but the world was a tad more important than his unwanted marital affairs, so they'd just have to be-

Yet another movement in his peripheral vision finally got Ranma annoyed enough to pay more than idle attention to his increasingly annoying parental figure. He stood and spun, a complaint already on his lips, only to find a wine glass filled with what looked like sparkling cider flying at him mouth first. A desperate attempt to snatch it out of the air and duck was made, but he'd noticed it a bit too late for that- all Ranma managed to catch was the stem of the glass, which left the liquid free to fly out and splash him directly in the chest. It was ice cold, and accordingly Ranma felt his height shifting downwards and his newly wet shirt shifting forwards.

Great. Just what he'd wanted. To be a girl BEFORE he even set foot on the island.

"What the heck was that for?!" Ranma yelled, seething. "Why I oughta...!"

"Pay attention boy!" Genma reprimanded in his "teaching" voice. "This is a lesson! Ever since we got in this limo you've been letting your attention drift, which is completely unacceptable! A martial artist must be aware of his surroundings at all times. He should not sit around getting distracted by daydreams!"

Before Ranma could protest further, the limo began to turn and slant upwards. The words she'd been about to speak died on her lips as the "city" came into view through the window, a veritable mountain lined at every point in view by buildings.

All of which were of slightly rougher make than Ranma had been expecting, honestly. That was a bit strange.

A fork and knife spiraled towards her stomach in a quick, tight arc. Ranma flipped over them, letting them spear in to the back of the carriage, and slowly turned her head towards Genma.

"Boy, did I not JUST tell you-!"

Ranma grabbed up a clean plate and sent it whizzing like a discus at the one Genma was currently eating off of. The angle it flew at was perfectly skewed in a way such that neither plate broke, but the second one's back end rocked violently upwards, as if its front had been struck by a hammer. This sent the half-eaten shrimp on its surface flying neatly towards Genma's face... only for the man to lean backwards, grinning as the seafood zipped past his chin.

"Hah! You'll have to do better than-"

A pair of chopsticks flew up Genma's nose while his head was tilted back, causing him to cry out at the intrusion and fall to the floor. Naturally, the older martial artist refused to take this lying down, and so began a uniquely expensive bout of Saotome Style Martial Arts Food Fighting.

30 seconds later, the limousine's interior was looking decidedly less fancy, and Ranma was covered in the fluid of roughly four different drinks. As the most likely items to actually hit her, for _some_ reason, Genma had almost immediately sequestered all of them on his side of the car. The older martial artist was himself currently bedecked by the culinary contributions of at least six separate dishes, but unsurprisingly this was doing very little to assuage Ranma's irritation with the man.

As drink number five struck home on her lower thigh, Ranma concluded that travel in the slowmobile was no longer worth it. She'd have to find the place on her own, but there was no WAY she was putting up with this all the way to the top of the island.

Throwing one last plate of seaweed to join the noodles already draped upon Genma's head like the world's grungiest wig, Ranma ran to the back of the carriage, forced the door open, and hopped out despite the limo still being in motion. Not that this was by any means difficult, given that it was driving up the incline at all of 5 miles an hour. Why exactly did people like to ride in these things again?

Unsure if her father was likely to follow her out or not, Ranma decided to go the extra mile. Figuring the panda wasn't going to want to hike up the island when someone was perfectly willing to drive him up instead, she immediately ran to the side of the upwards spiraling road and vaulted over the edge into the city below, falling a few stories before lightly landing on someone's roof. Said roof did not take kindly to this intrusion, cracking slightly even beneath Ranma's currently rather diminutive weight. Not wanting to cause any property damage (at least not quite _this_ early), the redhead quickly sprang down to the street below, stood, and took in her first close up view of the city.

...it reminded her of a couple of the run down, more crime infested areas her and her old man had passed through more than a couple of times, honestly. Everything in sight was dingy, faded, and looked like it was about to fall apart. A homeless man was sprawled out on the step of someone's house, covered in rags and snoring loudly. A couple of thuggish looking boys stared at her from an alleyway across the street, possibly trying to mentally weigh whether it was worth trying to mug someone who'd just casually jumped almost five stories to the ground.

Hmm. Maybe the rest of this place would be more impressive.

* * *

 _Ten minutes later..._

'Well.' Ranma thought to herself as she walked up a grimy looking street, a stray piece of litter blowing by like a tumbleweed. 'This makes no sense at all.'

This was a slum. Not that such a thing was that surprising- regardless of a city's location, that sort of thing was bound to pop up- but it was an _expansive_ slum. It looked to cover the entire base of the island, with no end presently in sight.

Why? Satsuki apparently had enough money to throw around that a million yen a week was just a drop in the bucket. Ranma would have thought she'd been tricked, or that perhaps the imperialist girl had been severely overstating her resources, but then again she had in fact been picked up by a limousine, and subsequently presented with more food than she'd ever seen in her life, barring her time at Chardin Manor. Clearly, she was missing something here.

At least she wouldn't have to worry about having to live in a mansion, if all of this was any indication. Though that actually brought up another oddity- wasn't this city actually pretty new? Ranma had been to Tokyo Bay before during the training trip, and she was almost certain that the city she was standing in hadn't existed then. So if her memory wasn't playing tricks on her, there was no way this place was old enough to accumulate this much damage. Yet everything still looked like it was about ready to collapse in on itself. Again, why?

A couple of guys leered at her still damp chest from the splintered doorframe of a nearby store, sending a shiver of disgust down Ranma's spine and prompting her to jump on to the closest two story roof that looked like it wouldn't disintegrate under her feet. She needed to get some hot water, and quick. Though where exactly she could get that, in a place like this...

"Ohhhh! Kangaroo! Grasshopper! Jumping frog! Hiiiiiii!"

After taking a moment to realize the voice was talking to her, Ranma looked down. A girl who looked like she'd stuck three-forths of a coconut on her head and called it a haircut was smiling up at her from the street below, waving her arms back and forth above her head so fast they were a blur even to her trained eyes.

"Um. Hi." Ranma said just loud enough to hear, giving a small wave back before turning away.

Hmm. Well, she couldn't just wander around forever, and she wasn't particularly enjoying strolling around down here anyways given how little there was to see. The limo had been going to the top of the island, but it wasn't like there was any hurry. Maybe she should go try to find Satsuki instead. Though given this city's design, it was hard to imagine anywhere a person like her would actually deign to...

A series of thumping noises issued from the side of the building she was on, and Ranma turned to see the coconut haired schoolgirl pulling herself on to the roof. Which confused her, as she was pretty sure there weren't any handholds on that wal-

"How'd you do that?" the girl asked, suddenly all of a foot away from her.

"Gah!"

Ranma jumped back, startled. The girl immediately followed, seeming to almost teleport into a crouch as she lifted and poked at Ranma's limbs, still pouring out questions like a fountain.

"Do you have springs in your shoes? Are you part bunny? Do you pretend to be a pogo stick sometimes by hopping on one leg? Is it-"

Ranma blurred, extricating her leg and jumping to an adjacent rooftop, never taking her eyes off the alarmingly fast girl. Said girl thankfully didn't follow, instead simply scampering to the edge of the other roof, still looking at her wide eyed and happily quizzical.

"Who are you?" Ranma asked, warily.

The girl looked confused for a moment, before seemingly having an epiphany. "Oh! I didn't introduce myself!" she exclaimed, bonking the top of her head with one hand and pointing to herself with the other. "I'm Makanshoko Mako! Hiya!"

 **NO STAR STUDENT, MAKANSHOKO MAKO**

Ranma could have sworn she saw something enormous and red flash into existence for a moment, but before she could blink it was gone.

"What's your name?" Mako asked.

Ranma didn't answer. That hadn't really been what she'd meant- sure, she'd gotten a name, but who even _was_ this girl?

The martial artist quickly did a once-over of Mako, trying to ascertain if she was hiding anything. From what Ranma could tell, the girl's chi seemed... normal, honestly. A bit higher than average, making it easier to sense, but just as utterly unfocused as most non-combatants. _Extremely_ unfocused in fact, to the point that Ranma doubted its owner could consciously do much of anything with it, even if she knew how.

Hmm. In that case, unless Mako's outfit was one of those weird transforming ones, which it didn't look to be, she probably wasn't someone to worry about having to fight. As such, the redhead relaxed a little.

"Wait, is your name a secret?" Mako continued obliviously upon failing to receive a response, her face suddenly taking on... well, what might have been intended to be a look of deathly seriousness, but honestly just looked both ridiculous and slightly cute on the girl's googly facial features. "I see! Understood!"

Huh?

"Don't worry, it's safe with me!" Mako proclaimed, saluting Ranma like a soldier. "My lips are permanently sealed!"

"Wha-"

"No doubt they'll resort to devious, underhanded methods to try and make me talk, but I'm prepared for them!"

"Hang on-"

"Threats, blackmail, torture, they'll never pry it out of me! I won't crack no matter what they try!"

"Who's _they_ -"

"I'll take your secret name to the grave if I have to! In fact, I'll have no choice, since I still don't know it! I-"

"It's not a secret!" the redhead blurted out, desperately trying to cut off the extremely weird path Mako's thoughts seemed to have gone down. "My name's Saotome Ranma, okay?"

"Oh." Mako's strange one-man conversation halted as she immediately resumed her normal stance and expression. "Hi Ranma! Nice to meet you!"

"...uh... right..." Ranma replied somewhat hesitantly, trying to readjust to the sudden shift in conversational tone. "Nice to meet ya, I guess..." she finished lamely, dropping off the building into the alleyway between them.

Mako moved to follow Ranma, but stopped at the ledge of the roof, looking down as if only now realizing she was not currently on the ground floor. Then, her cheeks puffed out determinedly, and the martial artist below watched with slowly mounting concern as Mako turned around, ran forward...

"Hey, wait, what are ya-"

...and threw herself off the building, plunging towards the ground in an arcing, rather graceless swan dive.

Ranma sped out of the alley towards the street, moving to catch the girl before she smashed her skull all over the road... only to stop short upon seeing Mako's face. The determined, utterly unpanicked expression she wore seemed to indicate that she was either stupidly fearless, or knew perfectly well what she was doing. Figuring that Mako wouldn't have lived very long if it wasn't the latter, Ranma held herself back- and indeed, despite the energetic girl's horrible choice of falling position, she hit the ground in a perfectly executed tumble, rolling across the road while expertly bleeding off speed.

 **-SLAM-**

Just enough for her to crash _into_ the wall of the house across the street, rather than through it.

"Uh. You okay there?" Ranma asked as she walked over, offering a hand to the dazed girl currently splayed out on the ground. Mako's eyes rolled around in their sockets for a brief moment, before swiftly refocusing as she happily grabbed the outstretched hand and swung herself back up, looking none the worse for wear.

"Yep, I'm fine!" the brown haired girl enthusiastically replied. "Or, wait-" Mako grabbed her head between both hands and shook it around like a piggy bank for a few seconds. "Yeah, everything sounds good!"

"Er... alright then." Ranma mumbled, unable to think of any other way to respond. This was turning out to be one of the weirder first impressions she'd ever received, which was quite the feat. Mako's was already beating out Sentaro's, and during that one she'd been paralyzed, kidnapped, and carried off on horseback.

"Right. So, quick question. Do ya happen to know a Satsuki?" Ranma inquired, figuring maybe she could at least get some directions out of this happenstance meeting. It didn't hurt to ask, at least.

"Huh?" Mako tilted her head. "Satsuki? You mean the Ruler of Honnouji?"

Ruler? What?

"I got no idea. Kiryuin Satsuki?" Ranma tried to clarify. "Long black hair, usually looks angry, has a habit a' occasionally blindin' anyone lookin' directly at her-"

"Like this?"

Mako pulled her face in to a startlingly good imitation of the girl Ranma was looking for, putting on a far sterner frown than he'd imagined she could possibly pull off, somehow instantly thickening her eyebrows, and substituting a discarded length of pipe she'd found somewhere for her sword.

"Uh. Yeah. Like that."

The impression vanished as Mako nodded excitedly. "Yep, I know her!"

"Great. Any idea where I could find her?"

Mako put a finger to her lip, eyes staring up into the sky. "Well, school is out for the day, but she'll be there again tomorrow. She's pretty scary though, and I don't think most people can meet her on short notice. Probably not at all, actually."

"No worries, I have it handled." Ranma waved Mako off. "So where's the school then?"

"Oh, it's up there." Mako pointed towards the zenith of the island. "Right at the top! You can't miss it."

"Perfect." Ranma nodded appreciatively and turned to go, but stalled before walking away completely. "Oh, one more thing. Know where I could get some hot water around here?"

Mako smiled widely and nodded, not even hesitating before pulling out what appeared to be a wrapped bento box... from the top of her uniform.

Ranma blinked. While she was perfectly used to people pulling random mallets of varying size and the occasional kettle out of thin air, _conscious_ access to the space those things came from was a far rarer talent. It required the ability to create and hold a chi pocket, and generally wasn't something one could learn on a whim, to the point that the only people she knew that regularly used it were her pops, Mousse... and now, based on what she'd just seen, Mako.

Which... made no sense whatsoever. Nothing about this girl did thus far in fact. Putting aside how simply _strange_ she acted, Mako had no apparent muscle tone or training, yet she'd easily climbed straight up the side of a house with no obvious handholds to assist her. She'd done a headfirst dive off a roof only to immediately smash into a wall, but had taken no more than superficial damage from it. She had access to a highly specialized chi technique and some sort of flash step maneuver, despite the fact that her wildly untamed energy signature indicated neither of those things should be possible for her. What the _hell_ was going on here?

"Here you go!"

Ranma looked up. The other girl was beaming at her, holding out a thermos full of what appeared to be steaming hot water. Probably usually used for tea or noodles, if she'd fished it out of her lunch.

"Huh."

Ranma shrugged and gratefully took the thermos. She supposed Mako's various oddities didn't really matter that much at the moment. The lively girl didn't seem to be hostile, and if it was actually important, then the mystery she presented would almost certainly come up again some other day, Ranma figured.

The redhead dumped the hot water over herself without pause, figuring if Mako had tricks like the ones she'd shown thus far up her sleeve, a little thing like an instant sex change couldn't possibly weird her out too much. Ranma sighed with contentment as his birth form returned to him- hopefully he'd be able to stay in it for the moment.

"Thanks." he said gratefully, handing Mako her thermos back. "Seeya round."

With that, Ranma turned and left, heading for the peak of the city. Mako looked on as he walked away, before turning around and skipping back towards her house, eager to tell her family about the gender changing bunny girl she'd just met.

* * *

This city was _bizarre_.

Five minutes ago, Ranma had reached a flat ring of land that seemed to mark the end of the incline, within which stood a tremendously tall wall that looked to reach all the way around the island. Large openings were placed within the rock at regular intervals, but each of them seemed to be individually gated by a heavy duty portcullis, preventing anyone from going any further into the city. Thus, Ranma had gone looking for another way up- except, as he'd quickly discovered, there _was_ no other way up. He'd even gone and asked someone who looked like they probably wouldn't try to shiv him an alleyway- the only access points for the giant track looping around the island were at the bottom and the top, and the gondolas that passed through the four widest gates only went  down in the evenings. The other gates had never been seen to open at _all_ , and there were no stairs whatsoever, which left it a mystery to Ranma how most people were supposed to regularly travel between the levels of the island.

Of course, he wasn't most people. It had taken approximately five seconds for the martial artist to scale the vertical wall of rock (wondering briefly why he hadn't just done that to begin with), and upon reaching the top, he'd found...

Ranma squinted at the view before him. This... this was an _island_ , wasn't it? Because if he didn't know better, he'd think he somehow pulled a Ryoga and managed to walk directly from the center of one city into the middle of an entirely different one.

He turned around and looked over the ledge he'd just climbed. Yep, still the same city. But whereas the buildings down below were crumbling, shoddily constructed, and mostly under three stories tall when they weren't built halfway on top of each other, the ones up where he was now were well built, in good repair, and were primarily composed of apartments that seemed to start at five stories and only go up from there, with a scattered mish-mash of shopping outlets crammed where space allowed inbetween them.

Well, this city's design made even less sense now. It almost seemed deliberate- even the architecture of the two areas was noticeably different, as if the buildings on the lower level had been made _intentionally_ badly.

A suspicion struck him, prompting Ranma to leap up several nearby apartments, treating them as successively higher stepping stones until he finally reached a point where no others were blocking his view. Upon reaching the roof, he craned his neck up, and lo and behold- there in the distance laid another massive wall, looking rather more smooth and shiny than the one he'd just scaled, and leading up to... some sort of giant, bell shaped grid?

Ranma squinted. Maybe "bell" wasn't the right word, as the shape resembled the top end of a volcano more than anything else. The spiraling road that wound around the island seemed to come to an end somewhere up there as well- was that the mansion area? Either way, it was huge, metal, and looked _realllly_ expensive, seemingly proving that Satsuki had  not in fact been bluffing about just how much money she had access to... which only made the question of why the city looked like this even more confusing.

Ranma jumped his way back down to the street, slightly disgruntled. He wasn't usually one to wonder about this sort of thing, but if he was going to be living here for an extended period of time, he rather wanted to know why someone had seemingly built this place to resemble a wedding cake that was slowly rotting from the bottom up.

Shrugging, he began walking further in to the area. While Ranma figured he could probably just roofhop his way around now that he was in an area where said roofs weren't as quite likely to collapse underfoot, it didn't seem worth the effort when the nearby buildings were so variant in height. With the apartments as they were, travel by roof would probably end up being more of a puzzle than a convenience. Besides, he kind of wanted to get to know the city a little better before he really started doing that in earnest- he needed to scope out the best places to eat, at the very least.

As he turned the corner on to an avenue of shops, a uniformed boy with a darkened brow, helmet shaped hair, and the largest chin Ranma had ever seen short of Gamagori strolled past him, frowning all the while. This would not have been a particularly noteworthy event, had Ranma not simultaneously spotted three people nigh-identical to said boy walking on the other side of the road.

'Huh.' Ranma briefly looked back the way he came as the lone male marched out of sight. 'Twins? The four person version, I guess?'

He turned back around, and a ponytailed girl in a fully blue, one piece version of the outfit Mako had been wearing walked past a clothing store. A store whose cashier, visible through the window, appeared to be that very same girl. As well as one of the patrons of said store.

Ranma blinked a few times before jumping up to hang on an open apartment window, looking down over the various passerbys milling about below.

Here, two guys. There, a girl. Three girls. A guy WITH a girl. All of them identical. All of them wearing uniforms. All of them wearing expressions that made them look like they were constantly dealing with some rather unpleasant bowel issues.

Weird. Apparently, this level of the city was entirely populated by clones. Unfortunate clones, too. The guys' faces all looked like gorillas whose faces had been smashed in by other gorillas, and their overshadowed eyes and perpetual scowls looked even worse on the girls that shared them. Not that it really mattered, but Ranma imagined if HE was going to make half a city's worth of the same two people, he wouldn't be so cruel as to make them all look like this.

Either way, it was creepy. Mostly because the pigtailed martial artist imagined this was what the result of a _successful_ mass haircut operation by the former-principal Kuno might have looked like. Ranma gave an involuntary shudder at the thought as he dropped back down to the street and warily continued forward.

Well, the buildings he was passing seemed to be pretty standard at least. Convenience stores, a supermarket, a decently large hospital... overall, this area seemed more like what the martial artist had initially expected from the island. Aside from the disturbing feel the occupants gave it, it was even pretty nice. Maybe a bit more modern than he was used to, but-

Ranma stopped walking as a tantalizing smell wafted through the air and into his nostrils. His stomach growled, his eyes closing almost involuntarily as he breathed in the scent.

 _Mmmmmm..._

Whatever it was, it smelled better than even the practical banquet that had been provided by the limo. What WAS that?

Following his nose, Ranma dreamily made his way over to where the smell seemed to be originating from. When he was all but on top of it, he opened his eyes, and immediately started drooling.

In the doorframe of a fancy and new looking restaurant sat the most delicious looking piece of food Ranma had ever seen. The dough was cooked to utter perfection. The sauce was still sizzling, fresh off the grill. The toppings were all of his favorites, the smells combining to create something near-heavenly. Even the serving platter, a giant spatula the size of a person, gleamed beneath the sun like a polished jewel.

...wait.

"Hey there Honey!" Ukyo said brightly as the spatula, okonomiyaki and all, met Ranma's chin in an absolutely devastating upswing that sent him sailing in to the wall across the road. He met it head first, breaking through the concrete up to his neck before stopping. A brief, ridiculous image of himself as a large floppy dart flashed through Ranma's mind before he felt something tug him out of the wall by his collar, and he was suddenly face to face with a perfectly _furious_ looking Ukyo.

"You ABSOLUTE, COMPLETE, UTTERLY SELFISH **JACKASS**!" Ukyo screamed as she glared in to his eyes like the sun itself. "Who the hell just up and moves to an entirely different part of Tokyo without even  SAYING anything to their fiancee?!"

"I left a note though..." Ranma mumbled, still seeing stars covered in little okonomiyaki toppings swimming around his head. How had Ukyo just put his skull through the wall? She was a decent martial artist, but she didn't normally have the raw strength for that. Did all women get this much stronger when they were angry, or was it just his fiancees? If Ryoga got this kind of force multiplier when enraged, then- well, actually that would explain a lot, come to think of it-

"You call a page reading 'Ucchan, not gonna be in Nerima for a while, seeya some other time,' a NOTE?!"

Well, yes, what was _her_ definition of a note?

"That doesn't tell me ANYTHING! Not that you were moving, and not that you were moving HERE!" Ukyo yelled, putting extra emphasis on certain words by jabbing a blunted mini spatula progressively harder into his chest. "You made it sound like a training trip!"

"Does it really matter now though?" Ranma asked, still feeling slightly lightheaded. Ukyo wasn't usually one to go off like this. This couldn't just be because he hadn't told her the right way, could it? "I mean, you're here anyways, so..."

"I'm only here because YOU are!" the chef shot back. "They sent me a bribe! It's not like I wanted to take it! I was going to turn it down, except it came attached to a message that told me you already took them up on their offer!"

"Wait, Satsuki sent you an invitation too?" Ranma supposed that made sense, since Ukyo had apparently been fighting during the school invasion as well, but how had Satsuki even known for sure he was coming? It wasn't like he'd mailed her back.

Ukyo's glower intensified even futher. "Oh, so you're on a first name basis with her, **hmm?** "

...something told Ranma that virtually any answer he could give to that question would be a bad one. However, for once, he felt prepared for this. Not all too long ago, Nabiki had made an idle comment to him after one of his umpteenth arguments with Akane- something along the lines of "Maybe one day, you'll figure out how to use that tactical knowledge of yours to keep your foot out of your mouth for more than two seconds." While obviously meant sarcastically, Ranma hadn't thought it to actually be a bad idea. He did tend to be better at various things when they were couched in terms of battle, after all. Thus, he had spent a couple of hours that night drawing up a list of pre-thought out strategies, meant for use not in physical fights, but in conversation. And right now sure seemed like a good time to try Plan D.

"Er... hey, Ucchan, why're ya down here, exactly? Didn't they offer ya a 'two star' position, or somethin'? I thought if you got that you went to a mansion."

Miraculously, this actually seemed to work to some degree. Ukyo simmered down from a boil to a mere stew as she let go of Ranma and crossed her arms. "Well, yeah, they did. But I requested a place and restaurant where I could actually _sell_ my food after seeing where they originally tried to set me up- have you seen the level the 'two stars' live on?"

"Only from down here."

"So not up close then? Well, once you see what's up there, you'll-" Ukyo paused as her train of thought re-railed. "Hey, NO, you're not getting out of this one that easily!"

Shoot. Plan D(istract)'s effectiveness had proved short lived. Would any of the others work here? Ranma rapidly iterated through them in his head. Probably not... dang. No easy way to deal with this, which meant the only thing left was the ultimate fallback. Plan E it was.

"How do you plan on making this up to me?!"

Ranma appeared to think about the question for a moment, before squinting and pointing over Ukyo's shoulder.

"Um, is that Tsubasa posing as that wall?"

Ukyo whirled around, only to find herself staring at a perfectly normal wall. Or maybe it _was_ Tsubasa, but if she couldn't tell at a glance then neither could Ranma. She spun around again, only to see the pigtailed boy leaping up on to a nearby building.

"Sorry Ucchan, talk to ya later, gotta go, bye!" Ranma's voice echoed back to her, growing quieter as he Plan E(scape)'d into the distance.

Ukyo grit her teeth, tightened her fists around her battle spatula... and sighed, before turning around and walking back inside. She wasn't going to catch him now, but she'd see Ranma at their new "school" soon enough. Right now, she needed to keep working on getting this place set up, at least if she wanted to be back in business anytime soon.

She gave a quick smack to the wall on her way in, just in case.

* * *

Ranma touched down on a roof a few blocks away, relieved that strategy had worked so well. Sure, Plan E was functionally identical to the Saotome Secret Technique, but that apparently worked both in and out of battle, and if it ain't broke don't fix it, right?

Seeing as how walking around on the ground like a normal person had not exactly worked out for him, Ranma decided to stay up where he was, and continued- with some difficulty- roofhopping his way up the side of the mountainous city. As he bounced an extremely irregular path across the tops of Honnou City's many one star residencies, he pondered what he was likely to encounter at the top of the island. Even as slow as the limousines were, his pops and the Tendos had probably arrived by now. Depending on how distracted his old man was by the new place, Ranma figured there was a 50/50 chance that there would be traps waiting for him in the entrance. More so if the stupid panda was still fixated on making sure he was constantly aware of his-

Ranma screeched to a sudden halt halfway across his current rooftop. Slowly, he backed up, his head gradually turning to the right as he prayed that his eyes had been deceiving him. Upon realizing they had not been, he let out a beleaguered sigh as he simply stared at the restaurant across the street, which was undeniably the Nekohanten. Now taking up residence in Honnou City, for some reason.

The universe apparently wanted to make it extra clear thar he was never going to get away from his fiancees for any extended period of time. Based on what Ranma had seen so far, Kodachi was probably waiting for him on the next tier of the city.

The pigtailed fighter experienced a brief moment of hope that perhaps it was just a very _similar_ looking restaurant, which also happened to have the same name. Hope that was very quickly dashed by the dreaded ringing of a bicycle's bell coming up behind him, accompanied by an even more horrifying sound.

"Airen!"

Deciding to take a page out of Mako's book, Ranma promptly dove off the ledge of the building, wanting to avoid getting tire tracks forcibly imprinted across his back/face/self in general for once. He touched down in a crouch on the sidewalk below, ran forward a bit just in case Shampoo jumped down, looked up to check if unwanted fiancee number three was still after him...

 **!-CRASH-!**

...and promptly ate rubber.

"Aiyah! Shampoo sorry!" the purple haired girl exclaimed, her tone not sounding particularly sorry at all. "Airen is okay?"

Ranma gave a muffled sort of groan, his mouth still full of tire. Why. If she wanted him to like her so badly, _why_ did she always do this.

"Shampoo tried go off next roof over so not land on Airen, but Airen move under bike after Shampoo jump!"

Uh huh. Right. That hadn't been on purpose at all. Except he was pretty sure Shampoo didn't generally ride her bicycle on rooftops. Not until now, at least, when he had just so happened to be nearby, on a rooftop. It was amazing, honestly. By now Ranma figured he could probably dodge nearly anything the amazon could throw at him, yet the moment she whipped out her stupid two wheeled engine of death, the thing unerringly honed in on him like it had a vendetta against his person worthy of a Hibiki. One of these days he needed to figure out what sort of bike based martial art Shampoo had obviously been learning, if just for the sake of figuring out a counter to it.

Shampoo removed her bike from his face, allowing Ranma to get to his feet. Only to immediately be glomped, as per the usual. He sighed, closed his eyes, and waited for the inevitable.

...

A single eye cracked back open, carefully scanning the area. Hang on. No Mousse charging in blindly while throwing around half an armory? No stupid panda bashing him over the head with a sign ranting about unfaithfulness? No Akane punting him into the air, planting him into the ground, or tossing water in their direction?

...huh. This was new. And a little inconvenient to be honest. Had he ever actually escaped one of Shampoo's glomps under his own power? When was the last time he'd even had the opportunity to _try_?

In response to Ranma's seeming lack of protest, Shampoo snuggled deeper into his side. "Shampoo so happy Airen here! No thought she would get see him for too too long time!"

Ranma squinted at the human octopus currently wrapped around his torso. "Whaddya mean? You followed me here, there's no way me bein' around should be a surprise."

Shampoo removed her head from his chest just long enough to shake it in the negative. "Is too! Great-Grandmother never say Airen coming, she just tell Shampoo we moving here, only few hours after school get destroyed."

Ranma tilted his head. Huh, that was before he'd even "decided" to come, which meant the Old Ghoul had plans here that didn't involve him... that, or she just predicted he'd end up here anyways and had decided to get a headstart on things. Yeah, that seemed more likely.

Two extremely similar male figures moved past them on the sidewalk, staring at the purple haired girl and her captive with frozen frowns as they marched past. Ranma felt Shampoo tense, pulling her head away from him to train a wary eye on the departing pair of indistinguishable men.

"Brr! Whole city so creepy!" Shampoo complained. "Full of ugly identical boy and girl who look like no have eyes. Shampoo no understand why Great-Grandmother think set up _here_ was good idea."

She took a moment to briefly shiver, before happily pressing herself fully back on to Ranma. "At least Spatula Girl and Kitchen Destroyer not here. Now Shampoo get Airen all to self!"

Ranma opened his mouth to inform her that no, Akane was probably on the next level of the city, while Ukyo was in fact just down the street, but in a flash of good sense remembered Plan S(hut it) and cut himself off. He was fairly sure that if the three of them didn't know about each other, he did not want to be the one to make any of them aware of the other two's proximity.

"Look, Shampoo, I really gotta get back to Pops." he said instead, trying to worm himself out of her grip.

Shampoo nodded vigorously, ignoring Ranma's squirming. "Okay! Shampoo come with!"

"Er... won't the Old Ghoul be angry at ya for leavin' the restaurant?"

"Shampoo no think Great-Grandmother be mad she abandon Nekohanten if she with you, Airen." Shampoo replied with a cheerful smile.

"Oh yes she will be."

Shampoo cringed as the person that had quietly pogoed up beside them lightly whacked her over the head. "Get back inside Great-Grandaughter." Cologne ordered. "We have a lot of work to do if we're to establish ourselves practically from scratch again."

The purple haired girl let out a slightly piteous whine as she finally let go of Ranma (*phew*) and turned to face the amazon matriarch. "Great-Grandmother, no is fair! Shampoo stuck doing so much now!"

"Feel free to blame Mr. Part Timer, who apparently still hasn't managed to make his way back to Nerima yet, nor found the notice I left him of our new location." Cologne replied, an undercurrent of annoyance running through her tone. "Until then, we simply have to get by without him. Which means more work for everyone, you included."

"Duck Boy's gone missin'?" Ranma interjected.

"Indeed." Cologne grumbled. "While it isn't as if he's under any obligation to be here, it is still irritating having to fill a position I did not expect to be vacant. I would have booted the boy back to China long ago if I thought he wouldn't just come right back, yet now he vanishes all on his own. Heaven only knows where our wayward errand duck has flown off to."

* * *

"I'm telling you, it's THAT way!"

"Ryoga, which way is he pointing?" Mousse asked irritably, unable to see the man as anything other than a giant blur.

"This way," Ryoga replied, guiding his companion in a direction 90 degrees contrary to the one the man's finger indicated. "Thank you sir."

"What's WRONG with you two?!" the frustrated man called out as the pair walked off.

* * *

Ranma just shrugged in response. He had never been quite sure why Cologne had decided she wanted to run a restaurant to begin with, but he wasn't about to question her decisions either.

"Stupid Mousse need hurry back! Shampoo tired of washing dishes!" Shampoo sulked.

"Huh." Ranma remarked aloud as the Chinese girl stomped back to the Nekohanten, longingly looking back at him only once as she grudgingly ducked back inside. "Never thought I'd see Shamps admit to actually _wanting_ Mousse around."

"If only to provide menial labor, but yes, such were my own thoughts on the matter as well." Cologne snickered. "Then again, if the hearts of the young weren't so universally fickle, I likely would have given up on you long ago, Son-in-Law."

The tricentenarian coughed and gestured up the island's omnipresent incline with her staff, still managing to somehow stay atop the length of wood as she did. "Now then, Sonny Boy, I'm afraid I must ask you to run along for the moment. As you might have guessed, I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I'm sure we'll both have more time later to... discuss the future, should the need arise."

Ranma didn't know what that was supposed to imply. Was she hinting that she knew why he was here? Admittedly, the thought of talking to Cologne about Satsuki's impending apocalypse HAD crossed his mind a few times in the past couple of days. This did not, however, make him particularly inclined to do so, seeing as how the old ghoul would gladly take advantage of any little scrap of information he gave her to use for her own ends. Besides, he still needed some actual proof the world really was going to go kablooey before he was willing to take the idea more than half seriously.

Deciding not to think too much about it for now, Ranma leapt away, just happy he'd been given an easy out for once.

"Yes." Cologne mused as his silhouette passed out of sight. "I imagine we'll have quite a _lot_ to discuss soon, Son-in-Law..."

* * *

AN: Well, it's rough, it's unpolished, I'm not as happy with it as I wish I was, but it's freaking DONE. Mind, I was planning on rewatching KLK in its entirety before starting this fic- or at least watching Episode 25, since I still haven't seen it (as you may have already read)- but that was delaying this endlessly because my motivation to watch that many episodes at once doesn't really hold up for series I've already seen, even if I really like them. So I'm just skipping that, and hoping you can forgive me if my interpretation of Honnou City's structure is off.

This chapter is pretty Ranma-centric, being more of an introduction to Honnou City than anything else. Hopefully it works, because this is probably the fourth variation on the chapter I came up with. I'm NOT changing it now.

As a parting note, one of the main parts of this chapter that stalled this? Mako. I have _absolutely_ no idea how to write Mako. I feel like she really needs a visual medium in order to fully express herself, and even ignoring that her personality is pretty hard to nail down in writing. I'm not going to just make her Hyper! Random! Etc!, but she teeters on the edge of that so often in canon that it's reallllly difficult to know what she'd say in a given situation. I'd say "whatever is funniest", but that's only sometimes true. She's generally very energetic and upbeat, despite the pit she lives in and the school she attends, but that makes her sound ditzy, and she's really not. She tends to think simply, though not stupidly, and also really _weirdly_ , which lets her have some surprising insights throughout the show. Not that they exactly _sound_ like insights, because she didn't even necessarily _mean_ them as insights, or at least not in the way they were taken, and there's also this propensity she has for going off on pseudo random tangents that somehow wrap back around to what she was originally saying, except not _exactly_ , and arrrrRRRRRGH. I think I managed to get down something sort of recognizable as her in the end, but... well, give me tips if you have any, please. Decent quotes of hers (from any situation) are even better.

Here's hoping the next chapter doesn't take another year and a half to come out!

EDIT: After some deliberation (and hearing the same question repeatedly echoed by readers), I've cut down the portion regarding Mako's name to make the joke clearer and less likely to cause questions. Also, fixed some information about the city's structure after finding a wide-scale picture of it I had SOMEHOW managed to miss.


	2. You Will Totally See Me Coming

AN: Just a heads up, I went back and changed a few things in the last chapter because _oh my goodness, I did not realize just how_ _hilarious_ _the upper half of Honnou City really is before now_.

* * *

Ranma decided to scale the second wall much the same way he had the first. While it was taller and more slippery than the other one, it was also sloped, and had convenient apartments embedded into its side that were quite serviceable as makeshift platforms. Given this, it wasn't long before Ranma was leaping over the edge on to the rim of the city's third level, where he immediately found himself looking at a small mansion.

In a cubicle.

Ranma simply stared for a moment, bewildered. Turning his head to the side, he found another, slightly different mansion, also contained within a cubicle. Above it, the same. As he continued to look around, it slowly began to dawn on him just what the "grid" he'd seen from below really was.

He had indeed found the mansion area- which was built less like a neighborhood, and more like a neighbor... _parking garage_. Whoever designed this place had evidently decided that the best way to fit a bunch of large fancy houses together was to place them all in little individual cubbyholes and stack them all on top of each other like Lego blocks. Because apparently, said designer had been a giant toddler.

Mystified by the construction of this place, Ranma wandered into one of the mansion's yards to get a closer look. The central building itself was about three stories tall, with an opulent looking exterior and a balcony coming off the roof that was almost a floor in and of itself. It was actually a little less grand than he had expected, but Ranma gave it points for not being nearly as ostentatious (or seemingly trap filled) as he had come to expect from places like this.

Yes, the mansion itself was fine. It was the rest of the setup that made it ridiculous. Particularly the expensive looking car sitting in the driveway- the useless, utterly pointless driveway that didn't even connect to a road, or have any evident way of _reaching_ a road. There the great hunk of useless metal sat, looking like some sort of absurd art installation. Right next to an above ground pool, probably made as such because it would otherwise be sticking into the ceiling of the person below. It was everything one typically imagined of the wealthy, packaged into a microcosm and made practically satiric as a result.

Well, that settled the question of why Ukyo had decided she wasn't going to be able to sell anything up here. In fact, Ranma was starting to wonder how anyone managed to get ANY sort of food up here. Or... get up here at all, for that matter. Hang on, climbing up the way he had couldn't be the standard method, could it? How the heck did anyone who wasn't him get in or out of these things? Particularly the ones higher up...

Figuring he had to be missing something, Ranma moved around to the back of the enclosure. The walls were tall, metal, and almost completely featureless... except for a couple of obvious indents near the ground. Ranma lightly pushed on a distinctly door shaped one, and the metal obediently swung inwards, revealing a warmly lit corridor floored with plush red carpeting.

Well then.

Ranma warily proceeded forward, the carpet quickly giving way to polished marble as the hallway widened and joined with several others. It wasn't long before the martial artist found himself stepping through a wide, brightly lit opening, and on the other side...

"Uh."

It was as if someone had remodeled a palatial estate to fit within the inside of a mountain. Standing what looked to be dozens of stories high, the entire "building" gleamed with a golden luster not generally seen outside of a royal treasure vault. A wide, ring shaped walkway circled around the center of each floor, accented by pearlescent marble bridges that criss-crossed the dome-like space in every direction. Tall rectangular openings took up a quarter of the wall space, presumably leading to hallways much like the one Ranma had just walked out of, while every other bit of available real estate was taken up by absurdly fancy looking stores and shops. Restaurants with exteriors advertising their hundred dollar menu items competed for space with jewelry stores expensive enough to bankrupt half a town. A single massive casino took up the entire bottom floor, both looking and sounding like decadence incarnate.

Ranma shook his head, clearing away his initial dumbfoundment as he began pacing around the oddly wide walkway of the second floor. It appeared that the inside of the top of the city was a massive mall. Or something much like one at least, as Ranma was fairly sure most malls did not contain an indoor car dealership, which also appeared to sell not just boats but _planes_ , nor did they generally have... was that a hostess club?

Having been penniless most of his life, Ranma was hardly in a position to judge how others spent their money, but he felt fairly justified in thinking that something had gone seriously wrong with the allocation of resources here. The entire bottom half of this city looked like a pit, yet on top of it _this_ existed? Had all the city's money been poured into this  single small area? The wastefulness of that nearly boggled the mind, and even worse all this "luxury" probably wasn't even seen often enough to be appreciated. There weren't really that many people walking around, especially compared to the lower parts of the city, and those that were...

A man and a woman in outfits that looked more expensive than the average car passed Ranma by, turning up their noses in perfect synchronicity and laughing scornfully as they walked into one of the nearby halls. Ranma snorted. What pleasant potential neighbors. He was supposed to live somewhere up _here_? This was worse than any other rich person-type place he'd ever been in. Hell, the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up it was so-

Ranma leapt to the side, recognizing his danger sense going off mere moments before a long black blur roared past him on the walkway. The sound of screeching tires reverberated across the giant mall as Ranma let out a sharp exhale, realizing he'd only narrowly escaped becoming a rare indoor victim of vehicular assault. Not that he could really be blamed for not expecting that; how and _why_ was someone driving around a limousine in here?! And more importantly, if limos could go that fast, why had the one he'd been in not so long ago been moving at-

Before Ranma could finish the mental complaint, the vehicle that had just tried to run him over kicked into reverse, backing up and slowing while a window on its side slid down.

"Darling! I've-!"

"Called it." Ranma muttered, immediately turning and making a break for the nearest bridge.

"-found- oho? Come back, my beloved!"

"Called it, called it, called it!" Ranma angrily repeated, desperately searching for a hiding spot as Kodachi leapt from the window of the car. Kicking off the bridge, he flipped in midair and landed on the railing of another one story higher, running down it for a short length before immediately repeating the same trick to reach the fourth, fifth, and sixth floor in turn.

"There's no use running, Ranma dear!"

Unfortunately, judging by how close her voice was, Kodachi was right behind him. The accompanying sound of ripping fabric seemed to indicate she was also dramatically tearing off her dress to reveal the leotard beneath, as per usual. Ranma didn't bother turning around to actually check. With all the bridges and railings around providing easy targets for a ribbon to latch on to, this was practically a playground for the gymnast, and he needed every bit of headway he could get if he wanted to lose her. Maybe if he could limit her mobility, or increase his own... or perhaps both?

Ranma abruptly reversed direction and dropped, twisting and diving past a surprised Kodachi while snagging the ribbon in her hand on his way down. Snapping it out to curl around a railing, Ranma held the tool's end and rode gravity down to the floor below. Letting go of his swing at the perfect moment, he cleared the railing of the walkway and sailed directly through the door of a restaurant.

A restaurant that happened to have lobster tanks set out for display.

Several seconds later, a bedraggled redhead pulled herself out of the wreckage of several glass tanks. Kodachi leapt through the restaurant's entrance a mere moment after, her gaze alighting on her love-turned-enemy.

"You! Vile harridan, how dare you follow me here!"

"Right, I followed YOU..." Ranma grumbled, annoyedly prying an angry shellfish out of her hair. Kodachi lassoed up a table, having somehow acquired a spare ribbon within in the last ten seconds, and hurled it across the room, where Ranma diverted it off to the side with a kick to smash in to even more tanks.

"Where have you hidden my Ranma-sama?!"

"He ain't yours and I ain't hidin' him, I _am_ -!"

"WHAT IS GOING ON OUT HERE?!"

Startled by the interruption, Ranma turned to see a boy in his late teens emerge from the kitchen in the back. He was wearing a modified chef's outfit- so much so that Ranma barely recognized that as what it seemed to be based on. His jacket for some reason became extremely long in the back, fanning out around his legs in a near frozen position, like a longcoat in constant wind. His hat was equally strange, being so tall that it seemed to threaten to fall off at any moment, as well as having an enormous fork and spoon crossed in an X embedded in its center. In the boy's left hand was a dark red ladle, its shaft seeming to suck in all surrounding light and criss-crossed with glowing, seemingly _moving_ crimson lines. Almost as an afterthought, a pair of joined, four-pointed stars laid emblazoned on the jacket's left shoulder.

"What have you done?!" the oddly dressed chef seethed as he surveyed the destruction. "This was half my stock of fresh lobster!"

"Uh, I-"

"Red headed witch! Return my beloved to me!" Kodachi cried, taking advantage of Ranma's momentary distraction to use her ribbon to snag the silverware out of the new arrival's hat. Weapons obtained, she snapped them forward like knives, flying forth to embed themselves in the wall as Ranma smoothly dodged around them.

"My hat!" the boy yelled, his hands flying up to the now empty toque. "The WALLS! My _restaurant_!"

Kodachi finally turned to face the newcomer as he interposed himself between her and her target, blocking her immediate line of fire. Her gaze swept over the chef, only to immediately drop away and lose interest once it came across the pattern on his jacket.

"Deface my restaurant one more time, and it'll be the last thing either of you two do." the chef snarled.

"Hmmph." Kodachi scoffed, turning her nose up. "I have far more important concerns right now than protecting your lowly two star eatery from harm."

The boy's face immediately reddened in rage as he whirled around to face Kodachi. "HOW **DARE** YOU!" he yelled, looking absolutely livid. "THE SHEER **GALL**! THIS IS A FIVE STAR RESTAURANT, AND NO LESS!"

"Five stars?" Kodachi frowned and briefly looked around the room. "Don't be absurd. You are running a hole in the wall out of a dressed up shopping center, and haven't even any customers to speak of. Now cease talking nonsense and move so I may end that little trollop, or I shall simply move you myself!"

Red became purple. "ALRIGHT, THAT'S IT! THIS IS NABEMITA NIRU'S KITCHEN, AND YOU'RE ABOUT TO BE PREPPED AND COOKED ALIVE!"

 **COOKING CLUB HEAD DINNER CHEF, NABEMITA NIRU**

Had Ranma still been facing forward, she would have been stunned as the same red flash from her earlier encounter with Mako briefly returned with a vengeance. However, with Kodachi presently too busy insulting stars or something to pay much attention, and the guy's strange outfit making her rather wary, the redhead was currently looking in the exact opposite direction, having turned around and quietly begun tiptoeing away a few seconds ago. Twisting her neck around to see Nabemita beginning to engage Kodachi with his oversized cooking tool, Ranma mentally thanked the convenient distraction and booked it out the door. The focus of an unwanted brawl moving _off_ of her was truly a rarity to be treasured, and she certainly wasn't going to waste an opportunity to both get away from Kodachi  and not be blamed for any of the impending damage.

Hopping back up a few stories, Ranma glanced back down at the restaurant across the way just in time to witness Kodachi beating a hasty retreat from the restaurant, with Nabemita right on her heels. The chef had exchanged his ladle for a pair of massive spiked tongs of the same color, and was slashing them forward to release red, strangely… steak shaped projectiles, which were bursting into flames the moment they made contact with something. Kodachi had exited the shop in what looked like a slight panic, but now that she was out in the open she was deftly avoiding every attack, leaping around the area like a grasshopper on a sugar rush and laughing madly the entire time. This appeared to just be making Nabemita angrier, as his swings became wilder and sloppier, his attacks flying every which way and scattering all around the plaza. Ranma was forced to duck behind a railing as one projectile flew all the way up to the floor she was on, set on a direct collision course with her head. It smacked into the ceiling and fell back down on fire, causing all the rich looking people standing around to hurriedly duck inside the nearest store.

Ranma nodded to herself as she stared at the burning meat and the chunk it had taken out of the ceiling. So those actually _were_ steaks. Yep, she'd been right to be wary. The guy's weird chef outfit was like the ones Satsuki's underlings… friends… underfriends? Had been wearing back in Nerima. She hoped Kodachi would be okay- while she didn't exactly care much about what happened to the lunatic gymnast, she didn't want the girl hospitalized just because some guy with a power outfit went too far.

Kodachi's ribbon whipped out and curled around a pillar, allowing her to reverse her direction midair to dodge another flying steak. She carried that momentum forward, tugging on her ribbon to swoop in unexpectedly and double kick Nabemita directly in the face, using him as a springboard immediately after to fully knock him over and jump back on to a nearby bridge.

Then again, maybe she should be more concerned for the other guy.

"Ahah! So THIS is the source of that amazing smell!"

Ranma turned back around to see Genma, stooped down over the steak whose fire had just finished dying down. Raising the piece of newly cooked meat to his face, he greedily bit into it, tearing enormous hunks off like a starved dog.

Ranma made a face. "Gross, Pops. In case you forgot, you're not an animal. At least not right now."

Admittedly, if one was going to eat off the floor, this was probably one of the cleanest you could possibly find. Still, even on the training trip they'd never been reduced to _that_.

Genma swallowed the last of the steak and looked over at Ranma. "Oh, there you are boy. What took you so long? And why haven't you changed back yet?"

"I _did_." Ranma said, watching steak juice slowly trickle down her father's already dirty gi. "Lasted a whole twenty minutes before I got splashed again. Where'd you even come from anyways?"

Genma grinned. "Why, from our new mansion of course! Come on, you can get some hot water back up there."

Waving his currently female son over and ignoring the sounds of the fight still going below, Genma leapt his way up the titanic shopping center. Ranma followed after, chasing his father to the roof of the structure until they landed as one in front of a hallway- the sole opening on the entire top floor. The doorframe that preceded it was an imposing piece, made of a reflective black metal and adorned with a pattern of three large multicolored stars, connected to each other by countless thin red strings. The hallway that laid behind it was quite a bit shorter than the one Ranma had walked down earlier, and had a single black elevator at the end, its doors open and awaiting passengers. Genma strolled over and stepped into it with no hesitation whatsoever, only to turn around and see Ranma still standing at the end of the hall.

"Well? What are you waiting for, boy?"

Ranma sighed. Considering what she'd seen down here, she was not looking forward to what awaited.

"Fine. Let's get this over with…"

* * *

The traveler paced steadily through the countryside, determinedly ignoring the cloying, oppressive heat that currently suffused it. The sun blazed down from on high, soaking fire into her black and red hair, but her well-worn shoes continued onward, unceasing in their forward march. The weight of the metal guitar case on her back served as a constant reminder of why she could not, would not stop.

…but hot _damn_ was she tired of having to walk everywhere.

 **THE KANTO DRIFTER, MATOI RYUKO**

The itinerant girl grit her teeth and wiped the sweat from her brow. Next time she came across someone in need of a good thrashing, hopefully they'd have some money she could mug them for in the process. Then maybe she could grab a damn taxi, or at least a _map_. Was she even still heading in the right direction? Sure would be nice to know.

Ryuko sighed, feeling frustrated. Wandering aimlessly around the country like some sort of grudge-driven hobo had not exactly been her first choice, but what the hell _else_ was she supposed to do? Everything she wasn't currently carrying with her was gone, either long discarded or burned away in the house fire set by her father's murderer. It had worked alright up until now, since she hadn't had any specific leads, but now that she was actually trying to get somewhere in particular...

"...-n't believe that rotten old ghoul took all my stuff with her!"

Ryuko's neck twisted towards the side of the dirt road, where two very scruffy looking teens were trudging out of a copse of trees.

"And I can't believe you're still complaining about it Mousse." the one dressed in yellow grumbled, seeming very fed up with his companion, or perhaps just in general. "Didn't she do you a favor? Or were you that eager to tote your entire room around with you?"

"It would have meant I could access all the spare pairs of glasses I had in it, so yes, I would have been THRILLED Ryoga!" the robed one snapped back.

Ryuko considered attempting her mug-and-leave plan for a moment, but after a few seconds decided against it. She had no proof that either of them really deserved a beating, and the pair looked ragged and down on their luck already. They were probably just as penniless as she was.

Hmm. Maybe not quite as lost though...

"Oy!"

The pair turned towards her, seeming to only now notice her presence.

"Who, us?" the one apparently named Mousse asked, squinting at her.

"Yeah, you two. Any idea which way to Tokyo?"

Mousse scowled. "No," he replied almost instantly, turning to glare at a nearby tree, "but that wouldn't matter if someone hadn't managed to lead us directly _out_ of it, immediately after we found our way back _into_ it..."

"It's not my fault the signs never lead where they say they do..." Ryoga mumbled in protest before pulling out a map. "But like I said, it really shouldn't be that difficult to get back. I think we're near Kobe right now, so if we head west we should eventually end up in Sendai. Then we can jump over to Taipei, and head back up to Tokyo from there."

Mousse took a brief moment to process that before snarling. " _Why_ am I still listening to your directions? Taipei is in TAIWAN you moron! Give me that map!"

The long haired boy grabbed in Ryoga's general direction and managed to snatch something vaguely paper like, which he immediately took to pouring over. "Look, we should be going EAST! That'll get us back to Shizuoka!"

"Maybe you'd sound more believable if you were looking at the map and not my _bandana_." Ryoga growled. "Give that back!"

The living embodiment of the blind attempting to lead the blind began arguing in earnest, which lasted up until Ryuko walked up and snatched the map out of a distracted Ryoga's hands. She took one look at it and immediately began blinking.

"The hell? This is a map of South America."

Ryoga flushed and started digging around in his pack again. Mousse just groaned and put his head in his hands, before looking up again a second later. "You. You're heading to Tokyo, right?"

"Uh huh." Ryuko replied flippantly, on the verge of concluding that this had been a complete waste of time. "So what?"

"And you, unlike SOME people, can read a map, right?"

"Yeah, but that ain't worth jack without a map of Japan, so-"

"Got it!" Ryoga proclaimed triumphantly, holding aloft a sheet of paper that did, in fact, appear to be a map of Japan.

"That's perfect, because we're heading to Tokyo as well. Join us. _Please._ " Mousse finished, sounding almost desperate.

Ryuko stared hard at Mousse for a minute, before eventually turning to Ryoga and gesturing for the map.

"Give me that."

Ryoga quickly handed it over. After briefly looking over the sheet of paper to locate the last large city she'd been in, Ryuko nodded and turned to glare at the boys again.

"You better not slow me down. I got personal business there to deal with, and I ain't gonna be delayed."

The pair's expressions brightened, making Ryuko grimace. Had she really just signed up to travel with these two bozos? Maybe she should just take the map and run.

She looked at the pair again. Mousse's face showed a mix of undisguised relief and gratitude, for all that he was staring at Ryoga, while Ryoga himself was looking at her like she'd just descended from on high to deliver heavenly salvation.

...ugh, fine. She'd let them tag along for now.

* * *

Nabiki Tendo was currently sitting in her brand new room, perched upon the side of her brand new bed as she stared out the glass of her brand new window. Yet the frown she wore as she looked down at the city was a familiar one, rare though it was, and one she very much disliked wearing.

It wasn't due to any particular dissatisfaction with where her family had been set up. Sure, the way the mansion was essentially contained within a large metal cube was a bit weird, and the inside "hub" that they had driven through to get here even more so, but living with Ranma had long since accustomed Nabiki to weirdness. Besides, it was still a mansion, a flat upgrade to the Tendo compound in virtually every possible way. There was nothing to truly complain about in that regard, so that wasn't the reason for her expression. No, Nabiki was frowning because she had recently realized that coming to this city may have been a truly dire mistake- and if so, one which she would be almost completely at fault for.

On the face of things, there appeared to be no downside to what the letters had offered. The deal was an incredibly good one, placing the Tendos in the lap of luxury for nothing beyond a location shift, and netting them hundreds of thousands of yen a day with literally no effort. It was, in point of fact, perfect.

Too perfect. Far, **far** too perfect. Nabiki was well experienced in recognizing deals that were too good to be true, yet she had somehow completely failed to recognize the blatantly obvious one contained within Ranma and Akane's letters. Maybe it was because she had just woken up at the time, maybe it was because it was a deal not actually meant for _her_ , or maybe it was because she'd simply wanted to leech as much money away from the Devastation Five as possible, given that they'd attacked her school, hurt her little sister, and ruined all of the plans she'd had on hand for the immediate future. In any case, she'd only realized how badly she was tunnel visioning once they were already on their way here, and it was too late to do anything about it. Which meant it was time for damage control.

Nothing in life was truly free. There was virtually no chance that everything here was being given to them for the low low cost of absolutely nothing- there had to be some sort of price. A catch, a caveat, fine print that she had obviously missed. Yet everything thus far seemed to be exactly as had been described. Better, even- besides the obvious luxury, from what she had seen the technology up here was ludicrously ahead of the curve. The living room contained a TV that not only took up an entire wall, but had attachments and options she'd never even heard of, and the computer in her room was so advanced that thus far, it remained a complete mystery beyond its most basic functionality.

This was not a good thing. In fact, this was even worse than Nabiki had been predicting. If nothing had been exaggerated or lied about thus far, then when the other shoe inevitably fell, it was going to fall _hard_. And Nabiki wasn't certain her family would come out of it unscathed.

She currently had two primary theories. The first was that this was a massive trap, one with an extraordinarily intricate setup, in which case she could only hope Ranma would manage to pull off his weekly miracle and somehow get them out of it anyways. Alternatively, it was a bribe- which, strikingly, was in fact the far worse possibility of the two. Bribes were not an uncommon thing, but one on this sort of scale just didn't happen unless the briber was exceedingly stupid, or both parties were already rich beyond measure. The Tendos were not anywhere near wealthy enough to qualify for the latter, and while Nabiki had originally written Kiryuin off as just another of Ranma's endless parade of challengers, no smarter than any of the rest, she was beginning to think that impression needed some serious reevaluating. The woman apparently both owned and oversaw this entire city, and if the end goal of her assault on Furinkan had been to obtain its students for herself, she seemed to have largely succeeded. Add that to the fact that Kiryuin's posturing had not in fact _been_ posturing, and Nabiki was starting to get the feeling she was going to come to regret her initial underestimations.

So, if Kiryuin wasn't stupid and this wasn't a trap, then what exactly was large enough, important enough, to warrant enticements like this? What did the woman stand to _gain_ from having them here? The obvious answer was Ranma, as it very commonly was, but Ranma wasn't the only one receiving special treatment. So was Akane, and from what Nabiki had found out before they'd packed up and left, Ukyo as well. But why? For what purpose? And why go about it this way? Particularly for Ranma, who bribes wouldn't usually even work on. The pigtailed jock cared very little for anything beyond his martial arts, and Kiryuin was almost certainly smart enough to have figured that out by the time she sent those letters. She'd have had far better luck trying to entice Genma with the sort of offer she'd made, or even herse…

Nabiki's teeth abruptly clacked together. Could she have…? No, too many variables, surely not… but if she was estimating Kiryuin's intelligence as being on par with her own, then…

Damn. Played like a fiddle.

* * *

AN: I know that was quite a wait for more setup and relatively less content, but in my defense this was initially a few thousand words longer. Then I realized the last section I had written was utterly pointless to include, and thus it ended up being excised. Sorry for those who were hoping the wait would lead to a longer chapter, twas not to be. Next one should be a bit meatier on content, which if things keep going as they have been recently, should hopefully not be too far off.

About that first section- when it came down to it, I had to somehow resolve the cubicle mansions (which are totally canon; check the Fight Club episode) with the fact that there is somehow room up in the two star area for all the luxuries we see them indulge in. This despite it actually being rather tiny due to the quite limited number of students/families that qualify to be up there. Here is my solution.

Viewpoint switching will be a little more limited here, in that I'll try to keep it focused on the three main characters. Nabiki was a bit of a necessity in this case however, and I wouldn't be surprised if similar cases pop up later. We'll see.


	3. Singular Purpose

_-The next day-_

Ranma, despite how heavy he slept, had long since been trained to wake up at a moment's notice given sufficient motivation. It didn't particularly matter where or when he went to sleep- so long as he was decently rested (an admittedly somewhat rare occurrence), his body would move to avoid Genma's customary early morning surprise attack, which was so utterly unsurprising at this point that most days it essentially functioned as Ranma's alarm clock.

Actually dodging this had gotten somewhat easier once they'd begun living at the Tendos, owing mostly to his father falling into a rather lazy pattern of constantly using the exact same opener: grabbing his son bodily, stepping forward, and sending him flying out the window into the koi pond. Sometimes it even still worked (as did thrown buckets of water), which was perhaps why Genma had yet to stop doing it. However, Ranma's subconscious mind decided that he would rather not start the morning cold and wet for once. Thus, his brain still half asleep, the martial artist's body kipped up on autopilot, angling around the coming lunge-

-and almost fell five stories to the ground before his eyes snapped open, and he very abruptly remembered where he'd slept last night.

Startled into full awareness, Ranma scrambled away from the edge of the roof and retook stock of the situation. Oh, right. He wasn't at the Tendo's right now, and given where he'd finally fallen asleep, the panda probably couldn't even find him to have their usual morning fight. Assuming his pop was up and even interested in doing so, given how he'd likely drunk himself into a stupor last night in celebration of their newfound fortune. Ranma didn't actually know that for certain, given that he'd lost his father completely sometime in the late evening, but he figured it was a pretty safe bet.

After going through a few brief early morning warmup katas, Ranma began mentally planning out his morning agenda.

"Let's see… school don't start again until tomorrow, so I guess today's pretty much free." he said to himself. His pops wasn't around to spar with, and Ranma certainly wasn't about to go looking for him, which meant…

"Nice! I get to skip straight to food today!"

Ranma grinned, leaping down from the roof with a couple extraneous flips and twists before landing perfectly in front of the building's front entrance. "Alright then. Breakfast, then head out and find Satsuki." he decided. "Once I finally got an explanation about what's goin' on… guess I should try and figure out where the Tendos are?" He felt like he should probably at least check up on them, and he did kind of wonder how _they_ were adjusting to all this. Sans Nabiki, anyways.

"After that, I can… come back here?"

Ranma looked up, taking in the castle gate-like doors of the front entrance and briefly remembering what laid behind them. A few moments later, he slowly turned back around.

…or, maybe he could just go explore the city some more. That sounded more appealing, honestly. In fact, maybe he'd skip breakfast too. After all, breakfast meant having to go inside and find a kitchen, a kitchen meant he'd have to deal with the mansion's servants, and servants meant he'd not only be incredibly uncomfortable and creeped out as they continually referred to him as "Master"- or "Mistress", as they'd initially used when he showed up in girl form yesterday- but also that he'd probably be significantly delayed in getting out of here. Which he wanted to do as soon as possible.

Ranma began walking away, briefly glancing back again and shuddering. That thing was not a mansion. It wasn't even a complex. It was a _suburb_ in building form, and one he strongly suspected existed in more than one time zone. At the very least, it certainly took up a significant chunk of the cavernous, artificially lit "room" it was situated inside of, enough so that Ranma had wandered around for over an hour last night trying to find the room they expected him to stay in (a time period during which he had found himself empathizing with Ryoga more than ever before). Eventually he'd ended up just jumping up to the roof, reasoning that at least down was fairly easy to locate, before falling asleep on the tiles.

Not a particularly good evening, all in all. In fact, Ranma was starting to suspect that _no_ evening in this place would ever qualify as "good" by his standards. There was an incredible sense of wrongness in trying to believe he now lived here, and he couldn't help but feel constantly on edge- even ignoring the less than flattering picture the Kunos and Chardins had collectively painted of the aristocracy, bad, or at least very _weird_ things tended to happen to Ranma in places like this, and he'd been bracing for the inevitable since arriving yesterday evening. Would it be one of the servants revealing themselves to be a secret Martial Arts Housekeeping master with a grudge against him? Another magical item that just happened to be lying around in a manor for no real reason? Some random ghost leaping out of a nearby wall to declare that it wanted a bride, or to have its panties stolen, or something equally inane? The "anticipation" was killing him; at this point he just wanted whatever it was to show itself and get it over with.

The pigtailed teen made his way to the edge of the area, heading for the large metal door that the servants had noted as an exit to this place. He took special care to distance himself from the two rather large ponds that resided within the area's expansive gardens as he went, annoyed by their mere presence.

"Whose bright idea were those…?" Ranma muttered. "There's gotta be somethin' I can do to get outta here. This place _can't_ be the only option."

Maybe he could bring it up with Satsuki, or whoever it was that controlled who got housed where? There had to be somewhere less… just… _less_ that he could go. His pops could stay if he wanted, but Ranma was certain that if he had to put up with this indefinitely, his nerves would be shot within the week.

Opening the door to the outside world, Ranma walked out onto a smooth metal walkway, enjoying the feeling of actual sunlight on his face. Having not actually used this entryway until now, the martial artist was surprised to find upon looking around that he appeared to be just below the zenith of the island, and could see what he assumed was the front entrance to his new "school" from here. He could probably reach it in just a couple of jumps, meaning it would take him all of two minutes to get there in the mornings.

'Too bad I don't really care about not bein' late.' Ranma thought, making a couple of deft leaps upwards to land on what looked to be a boarding platform for students exiting the nearby gondola terminal. 'Still, convenient right now at least, so- what the…?'

Ranma was now standing directly in front of what he assumed to be the entrance to the schoolyard. Assumed, because whereas most schools he knew of had gates, this one had some sort of huge, reddish gash in the wall in the shape of… actually he wasn't quite sure what that was shaped like. Some sort of large, thorny zipper? A Christmas tree as decorated by Mousse? That time Akane mistook the contents of a grow-your-own-crystals kit as something to be added to a teriyaki dish?

Words failing him, Ranma quickly gave up trying to understand the entrance and simply walked through it, reminding himself that it was no weirder than any of this city's other architectural choices- such as the size of the giant white walls that surrounded and encircled the area he'd just walked into. Incredibly thick and standing over four stories tall, they made the already wide, barren courtyard seem less like that of a school, and more like that of an amphitheater, or perhaps a prison. At the back end of the enclosure stood a tall, imposing building that extended partway out of the wall, which Ranma could only assume to be the "Honnouji Academy" he was looking for, and purportedly the place he could find Satsuki. It was the only structure _up_ here, after all.

As he steadily walked in its direction, Ranma couldn't help but note that the shape of the building seemed oddly familiar. He couldn't quite place a finger on why however, distracted as he was by the numerous groups of students scattered around the yard. It was not because the groups were primarily composed of clone people (which, strangely, looked markedly different depending on the group), it was more that the various sports they appeared to be practicing seemed to have… distinctly atypical methods of play.

As if to punctuate this, a soccer ball with spikes sticking out of it came screaming towards him from his left, briefly reminding Ranma of the time Akane had belted a baseball into his face. Unlike back then, he was paying enough attention to actually catch the incoming projectile before it made impact, deftly avoiding its sharper areas.

"Phew…" Ranma breathed, careful not to impale his hands on the pointed metal stabbing out of the material. "Who the heck's kickin' around a-"

A loud whistle blew from the direction the ball had originated.

"Violation! Only the goalie may use their hands to touch the ball!" shouted a boy dressed in a black and white referee outfit, waving a flag in Ranma's direction. "Midfielders, PENALTY KICK!"

"Hey wait a sec, I'm not- WOAH!"

Ranma ducked low as another ball came flying his way, this one possessing no spikes, but having apparently been lit on fire in exchange. Twisting around two more inbound balls that proceeded to _explode_ off in the distance, the martial artist broke into a dead sprint, rushing for the school as a small mob of soccer-playing clones began chasing after him.

"I ain't even playing!" Ranma yelled backwards in protest.

"It matters not!" the referee yelled in return from his spot atop one of the running clone's shoulders. "The rules of the game apply to everyone on the-!"

This was all he got out before being clobbered in the face by the newly-despiked ball Ranma had just kicked in his direction, toppling him from his perch.

"Jeez, where's Akane when ya need her?" Ranma complained to himself as he reached the building, jumping over the front flight of steps in a single bound. "Fightin' off angry mobs in front a' school used to be the tomboy's whole thing!"

Bursting through the school's front entrance, Ranma flew down the first hallway he saw, sending a random teacher who happened to be in the way spinning like a top. He continued in this manner for a minute or so, taking no care whatsoever to look where he was going, before catching a brief glimpse of outside as he zoomed past a window, and immediately backpedaling.

The soccer players were out in the courtyard again, having gone right back to what they were doing before Ranma had come along. Given how quickly they seemed to have resumed their insane "game" in fact, it was possible they hadn't even pursued him inside. The martial artist felt rather stupid for not even checking to make sure they were still behind him, but it was so uncommon for someone to just... _give up_ while chasing him that he honestly hadn't even considered it. The only obvious difference from before was that the referee seemed to be off to the side nursing a lump on his head, and still looked quite unhappy.

Somehow, despite the vast amount of space between them, the boy suddenly seemed to notice the exact window Ranma was looking at him through. He held up a large red flag in its direction, which unfurled to reveal a design easily recognizable as a skull and crossbones, even at a distance. A little black pigtail stuck out from the base of the skull, making it look remarkably similar to one of Akane's training dummies.

"Figures." Ranma grumbled. "Man, I don't even like sports…"

* * *

Hakodate Omiko, also known as Honnouji Academy's Girl's Tennis Club Captain, was currently running late to morning practice.

This was not something that anyone who actually knew the girl was liable to believe. In fact, lacking proof of her continued existence, most would have found it more plausible to assume the tennis captain had keeled over dead somewhere before believing she had truly let herself be tardy. Her thoughts on the subject were quite well known, standing out even among some of the stricter sports clubs- Omiko DESPISED lateness, equating it to not just laziness, but outright treason against the academy to which she'd sworn herself. The idea that she would allow herself to be tarred with that same brush was as unthinkable as… well, from a normal person's perspective, most everything considered perfectly typical at Honnouji Academy. "Unthinkable" is admittedly something of a relative term.

Of course, the reason for Omiko's lateness was not because she had not shown up to practice on time. Technically, she wasn't even late, as practice hadn't actually started yet- it couldn't, because most of the club's tennis balls had been either smashed or charred into uselessness yesterday during the Tennis Club's ongoing war with the Ping Pong Club, a conflict spurred by the latter's continued insistence that it instead be recognized as the _Table Tennis_ Club. Omiko's utter refusal to allow even nominal association of her club with the other had ignited an ongoing series of hostilities between the two, which yesterday had culminated in the Ping Pong Club Captain turning half the Tennis Club's equipment into a flaming pyre. The subsequent skirmish had left the Ping Pong Club's room so crater-filled that with a bit of silver paint it could have doubled as the surface of the moon, but that didn't make Omiko any happier with the ultimate results.

The tennis captain silently fumed as she walked down the hallway, itching to run so as to waste less time, but knowing full well that a member of the Disciplinary Committee could be waiting around any corner. That harpy Fuguhara was **dead** next time she saw her. At one time Omiko had found it funny that the girl all but wanted to _be_ her so badly that she'd started her own club in imitation. It was significantly less so now that the bitch was shoving her stupid looking two star uniform (and by extension her  breasts, because that outfit's design was just spectacularly awful) in her face at every turn. It just wasn't fair... how the hell had the captain of the Ping Pong Club gotten promoted before she had?! As if that farce of a sport actually contributed anything to the school beyond its leader's arsonist tendencies-

Omiko grunted as the weight on her back unexpectedly shifted, the newly arrived replacement tennis balls rolling around aimlessly in the giant metal basket. And another thing- why was she, the captain of the Girl's Tennis Club, the one stuck bringing these back from the mail room?! Surely it made more sense for one of the no star members to do this; what sort of club leader got relegated to menial labor?! She deserved more respect than this! If she had a two star uniform, like she rightfully DESERVED-!

Too caught up in her own thoughts, Omiko nearly crashed into someone coming around the corner, only managing to not do so because the boy jumped backwards at the last second. Disgruntled, but impatient to get to practice, she attempted to push past him, only for him to move directly, deliberately in front of her. The one star's mouth settled into a sneer as she palmed a tennis ball from the basket on her back.

"Unless you want to be my early morning target practice, I'd suggest getting out of the way."

The boy shrugged, pigtail bouncing slightly as he did.

"Had enough a' that for one morning, thanks. Just wanna ask you something real quick; might just be the teachers that get weird about this. You're a student, right?"

Omiko leveled a disdainful glare in his direction. "Are you stupid? What do you think I'm… wait." She took a moment to quickly look him over from top to bottom, immediately noting his less than standard outfit. "You're new here, aren't you? Must be, no uniform."

Instantly calculating the angles she wanted with some slight assistance from her lens, Omiko abruptly heaved the tennis ball in her hand forward to collide with the boy's forehead. It impacted with a meaty **thock** and bounced off, hitting the ceiling, floor, and both sides of the hallway before returning to the hand it came from.

"Shove off. I'm late as is, I'm not spending my time on trash like you."

With that, Omiko brushed past the lightly stunned boy, intentionally making sure one of her twintails nearly smacked him in the face as she did. Before she could get very far down the hallway though, a muttered fragment of sentence caught in her ears.

"…didn't even get to _ask_ about Satsuki this time..."

Omiko stopped cold, halting mid-stride.

"Come again?" she said, slowly turning back around.

The boy simply stared at her for a second, looking confused, before replying. "I gotta talk to Satsuki. I think she runs this place or somethin', but I got no clue where she is. I thought I could just ask a teacher, but the only ones I found so far started actin' all weird once they heard her name."

Was… was this guy _serious_?

"The one guy ran off, the second one started chokin', and the last one just told me I was brave, but it wasn't worth it." the boy continued, oblivious to Omiko's astonishment. "No clue what that was supposed to mean. It's like a whole school of Doc Tofus." He shrugged. "So now I'm tryin' students. You got any idea where I could find her?"

Omiko didn't answer, though she didn't move either, her shock at the boy's stupidity exceeding her desire to hurry back outside. Did he know literally nothing about this school? He was casually calling the ruler of the school _Satsuki_ , completely ignoring her rightful title, and he seemed to think he could actually just, _walk up_ to her and-

A wicked smile began to work its way across Omiko's face. Well, what he was trying to find did just _happen_ to be in the same direction she was going, and while she hated to start practice even later, the entire club was going to be behind regardless, so an extra minute or so could probably be spared. It would be worth the pick me up she'd get from watching this play out.

"You know what, sure, I'll show you where she is. Follow me."

Checking to make sure the boy really was following, Omiko continued on the same way she'd already been going, still restricting herself to the same slow, measured pace mandated by the Disciplinary Committee. She couldn't afford to mess up now, she could practically _taste_ the two star uniform awaiting her. If she stuck to the rules and ran her club well, she would definitely be rewarded, and it would be all the sweeter for the effort involved.

…not that it made this pace any less awful. Ugh, she hated having to walk this slowly, especially in the morning when the hallways were still pretty much empty. There had to be something she could do in the meantime. Maybe…

The ball that Omiko had been idly bouncing off the floor soon found itself striking the ceiling and walls as well. A few seconds later, two more tennis balls were extracted from the basket and summarily added in, and the beginnings of a complex pattern of bounces and ricochets began to form. Omiko smirked. Yeah, this could work...

The exercise evolved rapidly over the course of the next two minutes. The patterns became more intricate as the angles became trickier. The balls began reaching greater speeds, impacting harder and returning to their owner far more quickly. Eventually three balls became five, which became seven, which became ten, and Omiko began laughing aloud as the frenzied wall of lime-green rubber descended upon her.

Heh, nothing in the rulebook about _this_. It wasn't exactly the same as practice with her racket, but it was definitely presenting a challenge. If she had the enhancements of a two star uniform, she could probably double the amount of balls she was using and not even feel hard pressed to keep up. Just another thing to look forward to in the future…

Reaching a T-bend, Omiko was forced to adjust and readjust the pattern of her throws, hard pressed to keep everything from flying down the wrong hallway. Then, with a sudden burst of speed, the tennis captain snatched every projectile out of the air within the span of roughly two seconds. She held them all in a single palm, forming the balls into a rough pyramid shape.

"And here would be the serve…" she murmured, her free hand unconsciously grasping for a racket that wasn't there.

The sound of clapping rang out behind her. Omiko turned to see the guy who she'd almost forgotten was following her applauding.

"Nice speed exercise. Might have to borrow that one."

Omiko gave him a slightly lidded look before turning back around, choosing not to respond. No real point talking with someone who wasn't likely to be "around" much longer.

"I'm Saotome Ranma, by the way. Who're you?"

Omiko scowled, her expression not quite visible from the boy's point of view. The idiot did not seem to be taking the hint that she did not want to talk with him, but it wasn't as if she was obligated to respond.

Flat silence stretched on for several more seconds. Omiko turned another corner and grinned widely at what she saw. Excellent. Time to watch this guy get-

"So, do you have to file your teeth to get them like that, or…?"

A decad of tennis balls hit the walls at over one hundred miles an hour as Omiko spun and hurled them down the hall in a ten-pronged barrage. "They're like this NATURALLY you-!"

The tennis captain found herself abruptly cutting off as, to her shock, her target managed to catch four of the projectiles, kick two of them away, dodge three of them entirely, and snag the loose nylon of the final one between his teeth.

Well… that didn't quite compute.

"Not another word about my teeth." Omiko snarled nonetheless as she watched "Ranma" spit out the tennis ball in his mouth. A former gang member who'd just been forcibly recruited, maybe? If her immediate superior was anything to go by, it was certainly possible… whatever, it still wouldn't save him from this. "And we're here."

The hallway they were now standing in was empty, save for an exceedingly ornate door with an equally ornate frame. It was equipped with a few obviously high tech devices that had been flawlessly integrated into the overall design, and the entire outer edge was surrounded by an assembly of wide circular ports. It gave off an air of both majesty and menace.

 **THREE STAR ENTRANCE: STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN**

or

 **THREE STAR ENTRANCE: GATEWAY TO HELL**

The entryway to the exclusive domain of Lady Satsuki and the Elite Four was known to the student populace by two interchangeable titles. Two stars generally used the more complementary title, most of them having passed through it to receive their uniform at some point in the past. However, its second name saw far greater use, particularly by those students who had been forced to pass through it to receive punitive lashes as punishment for rulebreaking… or occasionally some less corporeal form of penance, for those who took lashes in much the same way the Disciplinary Committee Chair did. The stairs within could serve as passage into both paradise and torment, thus the existence of the doorway's dual monikers.

Of course, that was assuming one could even get _through_ the doorway to begin with. Omiko personally liked to think of what happened to those who weren't authorized to do so as the "Rocket Express to Hell", seeing as how its judgment came much swifter than the alternative. Also because it tended to involve multiple explosions, which was what she was primarily here to see.

Annoyingly, the soon-to-be-charcoaled teen who she'd led to the entrance did not appear to be making any forward movement, instead just sort of looking at the door as if he had no idea what to make of it. Evidently he needed some motivation.

"Well? Go on!" Omiko urged as he looked back towards her, making dismissive, practically shooing hand motions in the direction of the gateway. "Knock, newbie!"

Somewhat cautiously, the boy dropped the remaining tennis balls in his possession and gingerly rapped his knuckles on the door. Immediately, the ports around the edge of the doorframe began to glow with a bright, orange-red color, and a droning hum became audible throughout the hall.

"State your identity." The speaker on the front of the door intoned.

"Uh…"

"State your identity." The speaker repeated, the hum growing louder and the ports' collective glow brightening. Further down the hallway, Omiko grinned, her teeth glinting devilishly as she cupped her hands over her ears and began swiftly backing away.

"Saotome Ranma?"

There was a brief pause, as if the door was somehow thinking it over.

"Proceed."

Omiko froze.

The glow dissipated and the hum ceased as the door rose into the ceiling, revealing a darkly lit staircase so ridiculously tall that the top literally could not be seen from the bottom. Omiko simply watched with her mouth hanging open as the other teen shrugged and stepped inside, the door immediately resealing behind him.

That… no, what? What? WHAT?! The hell was- maybe he was being punished? No, the guy hadn't been even slightly worried about going up there, and if he didn't have a uniform he probably wasn't even a student, at least not yet, so what the-

 _Arrrrrrgh_ , practice! She needed to go to practice! Irritating boys who she'd expected to be cinders by now with access to places that they definitely shouldn't have LATER!

Letting go of the twintails she barely noticed she'd nearly torn off in her hands, Omiko rushed away at a speed the Disciplinary Committee most definitely would _not_ have approved of. In her mad dash to get outside, she completely missed the scruffy, worried looking teacher who happened to be peering around a nearby corner.

* * *

Mikisugi Aikuro slouched his way down the hallway, quite concerned with recent events. Even more so now than he had been earlier this morning, given what he had just witnessed take place.

Saotome Ranma. He knew the name quite well by now. By heart, even- when operatives stationed in the Furinkan area had reported on the incident that occurred three days ago, Aikuro had briefly considered having it tattooed across his left butt cheek in the teen's honor. For the first time ever, Little Miss Satsuki had reportedly found herself in a fight that left her, if not outmatched, then so severely pressed that the end result of the encounter had been deemed "inconclusive". While the school itself had still fallen, it was quite motivating to hear that the Kiryuin girl and her four best soldiers had been forced into a retreat by people who hadn't even known who they were, nor been remotely prepared for their arrival. Indeed, the majority of the resistance had seemed rather invigorated by the news, and the information they had gained from the event was quite valuable as well. Several promising potential recruits had been identified, with Saotome in particular being noted as likely the most so- the extensive training the teen had gone through clearly made him worth the trouble of approaching, even more so if he could teach others the skills he'd shown during the event. And, Aikuro privately noted, given that the uniforms of his organization verged on the nonexistent, it certainly didn't hurt that the boy's female form was quite a looker.

…admittedly, he was still having a slightly difficult time believing that part, despite the pictures that had been included. Honestly the report in its entirety had gotten hard to buy somewhere around the point that gender changes, gnomes, and giant bipedal cow monsters had begun being mentioned. Still, the end result was still clear. With some assistance, Saotome had managed to come out even with the Kiryuin girl, and chased her off definitively enough to prevent the area from being annexed, occupied, or even put under any sort of surveillance. Effectively, he'd won.

So what was he doing _here_ today, seemingly heading up to meet with the very person he'd fought so hard against? Had Satsuki somehow managed to draw yet another former opponent to her side? It would certainly be like her, considering the known history of her current council members. Saotome submitting to the same despotic views she held would spell rather terrible news for the resistance, particularly if Satsuki made him a three star. The Elite Four were going to be difficult enough to defeat as things stood; they most certainly did not need another member to make it even more so.

The massive influx of new arrivals to the island was another sign for concern, and one which Aikuro would have been hard pressed not to notice even without his undercover "teacher" persona giving him access to the student register. Satsuki's en masse recruiting of Furinkan's students had been quite bizarre- by all accounts, the incoming students still had their homes, which was not something true of most of the island's other residents for one reason or another. Yet they had chosen to move to Honnou City regardless. Why? He definitely needed to look into it soon.

Aikuro slipped through the entrance to the main office, which all the teachers had been called on to gather at a few minutes ago. Due to his little detour, he'd ended up slightly late. As such, the tiny room, which was tucked away in a dark, far flung corner of the school, was already quite crowded, leaving him little space to move forward.

Aikuro spotted the gym teacher, Ikinokoru Toshi, standing slightly apart from the other instructors. Due to the intensity with which the sports clubs conducted themselves and the tendency of their members to wander off and do their own thing during his class, Toshi was essentially superfluous for a large chunk of the school. He mostly spent his time training the no star students how to not inadvertently die during their time at Honnouji Academy, particularly during events like the infamous No Late Day.

"Oh, Mikisugi. Hey." Toshi greeted as Aikuro walked up, seemingly distracted by something.

"Hi Ikinokoru." Aikuro replied, letting his voice slip into the withered rasp he used while in disguise. "Is something wrong?"

"Someone just asked me where to find Lady Satsuki. Not so he could avoid her, mind, but so he could go 'talk' to her. Poor kid seemed new, probably didn't understand how outmatched he is. I told him it wasn't worth it, but he insisted, so I sent him in the wrong direction."

Aikuro frowned. He had a feeling he knew who said kid had been, but before he could ruminate on it any further, the principal stood up on a chair at the back of the room and called everyone to attention. An old, balding man who solidly held the most irrelevant position in the school, given that everyone knew perfectly well who was actually in charge, the principal didn't tend to do much of anything beyond wring his hands and hope no one came to him with a concern he was nominally supposed to handle. To see him actually _doing_ something was a serious rarity.

"Is everyone here? Yes?" the principal asked, not seeming remotely interested in whether or not everyone actually was. "Good, good. I have an… _exciting_ announcement to make."

"Excuse me." someone very small said quietly as they slipped past Aikuro, who didn't manage to get a good look before the person disappeared into the throng.

"I have a new staff member to introduce to all of you." the principal continued, sounding like he was being forced to say the words at gunpoint. "She comes… personally recommended… by Lady Satsuki herself."

In other words, probably a plant who was not-so-secretly here to keep everyone in line. Great. Thankfully, to Aikuro's knowledge his cover was still solid, and as long as it held this hopefully wouldn't be that big of a problem.

Beyond the other instructors, who were now muttering quietly amongst themselves, the sound of another chair being pushed across the floor to be set next to the principal's reverberated throughout the room. Seconds later, someone's forehead rose up and poked up over the crowd.

…and no more of them.

"Er, I'm afraid no one in the back can see you, miss." the principal said nervously as the forehead swiveled around a little.

"Darn it. Hey, can you lift me up?"

The elderly man looked to be on the verge of passing out. Slowly, he reached down with both arms and drew up a small girl who looked no older than 10, holding her out towards the crowd. The sudden temptation to break into a rendition of "The Circle of Life" ran through the minds of several of the room's occupants, but no one dared make a sound.

"It is my… oof, pleasure to introduce our new English teacher, as well as Assistant Head Disciplinarian… ooh, my back… Miss Ninomiya Hinako."

The girl smiled and waved at her soon-to-be coworkers, the stars of her brand new outfit glimmering faintly in the low light of the room.

"Hiya!"

* * *

"Finally." Ryuko said to herself as they approached Kofu City. "Sure took long enough."

Yesterday evening for Ryuko had been… well, put lightly, somewhat frustrating. As she had quickly discovered, trying to lead Ryoga and Mousse towards a specific destination was like being the owner of a pair of blind, stupid cats- ones that wanted to go in literally any direction _besides_ the one she needed them to go, at that. It had been unbearably annoying, and only hadn't significantly slowed the pace she wanted to set because the pair seemed to be virtually tireless. Even so, it was not something she was willing to put up with for however long it was going to take to reach Tokyo.

Hence the solution she'd come up with.

Ryuko felt another tug on the chain in her right hand and yanked it forward, snapping it taught. She heard Ryoga cry out in surprise several meters behind her, followed by an embarrassed chuckle as the chain re-slackened. Half a minute later, this happened again, this time with the chain in her left hand as Mousse walked into a ditch off the side of the road. It didn't take him long to get out of it thankfully, and so barely impacted their current speed.

The setup was extraordinarily stupid looking, but it worked. Admittedly, towing two almost fully grown men behind her via the world's most hardcore looking child leashes was still more work than Ryuko had thought she was initially signing up for, and Ryoga and Mousse were both so _eager_ to wander off that it would have been incredibly easy to ditch them. If it hadn't been for what she'd witnessed the pair doing yesterday, she would have hiked off without them a few hours into this, if not earlier.

As they entered the city proper, the weird looks they'd been getting from the occasional passerby increased exponentially. Ryuko did her best to ignore them, but after the third random yelling of "Kinky!" and several wolf whistles, she was more than ready to bust a few heads open. Thankfully, there appeared to be a perfect place for something of that exact nature quite nearby.

Dragging her dual burdens over to a small, empty park filled with dilapidated playground equipment, Ryuko turned around to face her two tagalongs for the first time in hours. Aside from Ryoga's face being so red that he looked liable to burst a blood vessel any minute, they seemed fine, as expected. Good, she wanted them in decent condition for this.

"Here, you can have these back for now." Ryuko said, throwing the ends of Mousse's borrowed weaponry in his direction. "We're taking a break."

"Oh thank goodness." Ryoga whimpered, hurriedly unwrapping the chain around his waist. "I thought I was going to die of embarrassment back there!"

Mousse simply nodded in agreement as he unwrapped his own restraints and withdrew them back into his sleeves. While he was honestly rather used to being humiliated (owing primarily to his refusal to wear his glasses on a consistent basis), _that_ had been a lot more public than usual. Sure, he hadn't exactly had any alternative solutions to offer, but still…

Ryuko unslung the guitar case from her shoulder and laid it on the ground, pulling out the long, gleaming red scissor blade inside it. The two martial artists watching her startled, neither of them having realized she was carrying that.

"Alright then. Let's get started." Ryuko said, a smile beginning to spread over her face.

"Er… start what, exactly?" Ryoga asked, nervously fingering the handle of his umbrella.

"If I'm gonna have to literally drag you two the whole way to Tokyo, I ain't doing it for nothing." Ryuko stated, lying the blade across her shoulder. "So, you're going to make it up to me. You two are pretty good fighters, right? I saw that little scuffle yesterday."

Ryoga and Mousse looked at each other. They had indeed taken to sparring in the evening recently, mostly to work the unending frustration at their situation out on something that could actually put up a fight. Granted, Mousse had a _slight_ disadvantage in that he was barely able to see, so they'd mostly kept to doing it in large clearings, where Ryoga was literally the only object around to possibly hit. If Ryuko had been watching, evidently she'd stayed fairly far back.

"Yeah, I'd like to think so." Ryoga replied.

"You could say that." Mousse agreed.

Ryuko smirked. "Glad to hear it."

A sucker punch caught Mousse in the gut, sending him stumbling backwards, coughing his lungs out. Ryoga was more prepared, managing to pull out his umbrella and block the blunt end of the scissor blade that came swinging his way half a second later.

"Since I'm carrying this thing around anyways, I should really learn how to use it, dontcha think?" Ryuko grinned fiercely, pulling back slightly. "Only way that's gonna happen is practice, and I ain't had a good brawl in a while anyways."

"Hold on," Ryoga protested, "you're not going to be able to-"

Ryuko kicked out, looking to knock Ryoga's right leg out from under him. His ankle refused to so much as budge, and the impact in fact hurt her foot more than anything else.

"Uh… look, not to brag, but I'm pretty much invulnerable, so there's no point-"

Ryuko aimed higher. Ryoga collapsed to the ground as she struck a part of him that was most definitely _not_ invulnerable.

"Heh, you really couldn't avoid that? You weren't supposed to go down that fast." Ryuko mock-complained, before noticing Mousse simply standing off to the side. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

"You're our only method of getting back to Tokyo right now." Mousse said with an arrogant expression, one of the few things he could do that _did_ in fact work better without his glasses on. "I'd rather not accidentally kill you."

"Then I guess you'd better be _careful_." Ryuko shot back, bursting forward with her scissor blade held high.

Mousse stood stock still until the very last second, as Ryuko was already swinging down. His arms suddenly lashed out in front of him, and Ryuko abruptly found a pair of scythe-like blades crossed in front of her, effortlessly blocking her weapon.

"You _don't_ want to do this." Mousse stated firmly. "And neither do I."

Ryuko growled. "Man, with the way you two were beating on each other yesterday, you wouldn't think it'd be so hard to get you to fight."

Letting go of her scissor blade with her off hand, Ryuko grabbed for the sleeve of Mousse's robes. He moved it backwards, and several small balls fell from it to the ground, releasing a surprisingly large cloud of thick, gray smoke. The resistance against her blade suddenly disappeared as Ryuko lost sight of her opponent.

"Do you really think it's a good idea to make it even _harder_ for yourself to see?" Ryuko taunted, watching and listening for any hint of movement. The sound of a step, a wisp of unnaturally moving smoke-

She caught the whistle of wind from her right just in time to swivel and see a knife come flying at her. She had no time to dodge, but the blade failed to cut, instead merely smacking into her cheek hard enough to bruise.

"That could just as easily have been sharp." Mousse's voice called from a direction completely unrelated to the one the knife had come from. "Give up."

"Not a chance!" Ryuko snarled to the air as she charged forward. It didn't matter where Mousse was right now, she just needed to find him when she got out of-

A quartet of chains struck through the smoke directly in front of her. Ryuko reflexively jumped back, knocking the two aimed at her face away, only for the other two to wrap around her legs. Half a second later, she was pulled off her feet and into the air. Unable to do anything, the chain whipped her out of the quickly-dissipating smoke cloud and released her mid-flight, sending her flying back-first into a decaying wooden slide.

After taking a few seconds to push through the pain, Ryuko stood, wincing. Mousse stood a couple dozen feet away with Ryoga at his side, the latter looking relatively recovered.

"Do you surrender?" Mousse asked, somewhat smugly.

Ryuko chose to answer by wordlessly rushing forth, blade outstretched. Mousse sighed and jumped upwards, landing on top of a rusting jungle gym and removing himself from the fight. "Pointless. Ryoga, you finish this."

Ryuko didn't react to Mousse's statement, as she was too busy smashing the blunt end of her scissor blade into Ryoga's blocking forearm. He took it impassively, seeming to not even feel the impact.

"That last attack was a pretty dirty move." Ryoga said, sounding slightly irritated.

"How the hell are you this tough?!" Ryuko demanded, continuing her futile assault.

"I went through training that involved repeatedly smashing boulders into myself until I could smash them instead." Ryoga explained. "It made my bones harder than rock. I don't want to fight you, and you're not strong enough to hurt me."

Ryuko attempted to repeat her previous feat and prove otherwise, but found herself rebuffed. "Not without doing that at least, which I'm not going to let happen twice."

Ryuko considered that for a moment, before smashing the grip of her weapon into the tip of Ryoga's nose. He stumbled backwards, howling in pain.

"You're right, your bones are strong. Too bad the nose ain't bone, huh?" Ryuko said, smirking.

Ryoga still didn't seem particularly hurt, but he did look angry now.

"Alright, fine!" he yelled, beginning to walk forwards. "If you _really_ wanna fight, then-!"

"Hang on." Ryuko interrupted, bringing Ryoga's building momentum to an immediate halt. "You mind putting this off for just a minute?"

"Uh..." Ryoga said, too confused by the sudden reversal to properly reply.

"Thanks." Ryuko grinned, taking the non-response as an implicit agreement before turning towards Mousse. "Oy, Blind Boy! Bet you can't guess where I am!"

Mousse turned towards Ryuko's voice, never thrilled to be reminded of the problem he tried to acknowledge as little as humanly possible. "I'm not _deaf_ you know, I can still hear-"

"I gotta ask, can you even see the sky when you look up?" Ryuko taunted. "Because you really have me wondering."

Mousse grit his teeth. "Just because my eyesight isn't the best doesn't mean-"

"What eyesight? You're practically blind! You couldn't hit me if I waved this thing around like a flag!" Ryuko retorted, doing just that as she swung her weapon up and down in the most obvious manner she possibly could.

That did it. "Ryoga, switch off!" Mousse yelled.

"Hey, hold this for me." Ryuko said, shoving her scissor blade into Ryoga's hands.

"Wait, wha-"

Ryuko hurriedly moved out of the way just before a swan shaped training potty descended from the sky and smashed Ryoga in the face. She then proceeded to laugh her ass off as Mousse managed to cluelessly fight in her stead for a good half a minute, only realizing his error once Ryoga clocked him in the face. This was turning out to be an entirely different kind of fun than the fights she was used to. Who else would that _possibly_ have worked on?

Spying Ryoga's umbrella lying on the ground, Ryuko moved to pick it up, figuring she could use it as a substitute for her scissor blade until she got it back. Upon failing to lift it more than a few inches off the ground, she realized the mistake she'd made.

"Tch…"

She looked up to see Ryoga standing in front of her, not looking particularly amused. Shrugging, she stood and readied herself for a good old-fashioned fistfight.

Her opponent said nothing as he shot forward. Ryuko immediately found herself on the defensive, unable to get half a second to really give anything in return before he kicked her backwards into the park's outer fence. "You're quick." Ryoga said, almost thoughtfully.

Searching for a way to get a moment to breathe, Ryuko grabbed a handful of loose dirt from the ground and flung it at Ryoga's face as he re-approached. He dodged, the dirt going over his shoulder. "And sneaky…"

Ryuko punched forward at air, trying to predict Ryoga's movements. He caught her fist mid-flight and held it. "Not to mention stronger than you look."

A palm strike blew through her nearly nonexistent defense, punching into her stomach. Ryuko gasped, the air driven out of her lungs. "But you're sloppy…"

A foot hooked itself behind hers and casually swept her feet from beneath her, knocking Ryuko fully on to her back. "Your style is completely undisciplined…"

Ryuko made to get up, only for the end of the scissor blade to come to rest beneath her chin. "And you gave your only weapon to _me_."

A few seconds passed, before Ryoga's serious demeanor evaporated. The scissor blade withdrew, allowing Ryuko to slowly get to her feet, scowling.

"Sorry." Ryoga said with a hand behind his head, seeming a little embarrassed. "You're not really all that bad, but Mousse and I are martial artists, and we've both trained more than… well, most people."

Ryuko cursed under her breath. Damn, these two really were good. She known from the start she probably wouldn't win, given all the crazy stuff she'd seen the two doing last evening, but she'd hoped to at least make a better showing that that.

"Can we stop now, please?" Ryoga asked nervously. "I don't really think-"

"CEASE!"

The trio looked as one in the direction of the yell after realizing it hadn't come from any of them. A… samurai… dressed in bright red stood just outside the park/battlefield, surrounded by six similarly dressed, differently colored samurai. Together, all seven colors of the rainbow were present.

"The hell?" Ryuko muttered.

"We are the samurai police force of Kofu." the man at the head of the small group barked. "You are trespassing."

"Japan still has samurai?" Mousse asked, seeming genuinely surprised.

The new arrivals didn't reply, instead choosing to menacingly unsheath their swords in tandem. The blades were long, sharp, and apparently color coded, matching the armor of their owners... mostly. The two groups both stared, watching the samurai in green sheepishly exchange a yellow sword for the yellow samurai's green one, before resuming their confrontation.

"Hey, um, there's no need for this, we can leave." Ryoga said, attempting to placate the new arrivals. "We were just sparring… sorta…"

"Irrelevant." the red samurai replied. "By the Code of the Samurai, as well as the Kofu Police Rules and Regulations Booklet, we are honor bound to bring you in!"

As one, the company charged forward.

'Well,' Ryuko thought as she grabbed her scissor blade back from Ryoga, 'guess this counts as practice too…'

* * *

Ranma was starting to think he was caught in some sort of infinite loop of staircase. Was he even really walking anywhere? Did this shaft, this _tower_ , have an actual end? It wasn't as if he was getting tired, but boredom had long since set in, and it was starting to drive the martial artist spare. It felt like he'd been walking up these Kami-forsaken stairs longer than it took two entirely separate scenes to finish, and he still couldn't even see a door-

It was of course just as Ranma was thinking this that a metallic surface suddenly shot upwards less than two feet in front of him, letting hazy light shine through the newly visible rectangular opening. The movement was quick, unexpected, and directly in front of the pigtailed teen's face, causing him to react on instinct and automatically move backwards to create distance. This, unfortunately, put his right foot completely over the back edge of the step he was on.

Ranma's eyes widened at the sudden lack of ground as he predictably began to topple. His concentration narrowed as he desperately fought to regain his balance, steadfastly refusing to let himself drop. Not only would falling down the neverending staircase hurt like hell, it would force him to climb back _up_ here again, which was just not happening if he had even the slightest amount of choice in the matter.

As if by sheer force of will, Ranma somehow managed to stabilize himself and practically threw himself through the door, finding himself in a small hallway.

"Nice entrance. I'm not impressed."

One which happened to be occupied.

"Almost defeated by the stairs." said a small, pink haired girl that Ranma vaguely recognized as one of Satsuki's underlings. "Hard to believe Satsuki-chan chose _you_." she sneered.

Ranma looked away, slightly embarrassed. Yeah, not his finest moment. "Am I at least in the right place?" he asked.

The girl rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I guess you are." she said, turning and marching away. "Come on, Horse!"

Horse…?

Puzzled by the designation, Ranma followed the girl to the other end of the hall. While the diminutive drum major casually strode through the opening and into the area beyond, Ranma pulled up short just outside of it, lingering in the entrance.

Well, this was it. He wondered what he was about to hear… as well as if he actually wanted to hear it. This whole situation as it had been presented so far was a touch beyond the norm even for him, and he still wasn't sure he could trust he was doing the right thing. It was admittedly a little late to be having second thoughts though, given that he was already here. Sure, that decision had mostly been pushed on him by others, but he'd eventually come to the conclusion that it just made things simpler, hadn't he? After all, if there really was some big threat to the entire world coming, he couldn't just say it didn't involve him. He did sort of LIVE here after all, so-

"Oy! Are you coming in, or are you afraid there might be more stairs in here?" Ranma heard the pink haired girl mockingly call from inside. "Because I'll warn you, there are! A whole three of them! Scary stuff, but I _think_ you can brave it!"

Bristling, Ranma shook away his remaining reservations and confidently stepped inside.

The room was strangely dim, considering the strange floating globes of light scattered around that seemingly should have been illuminating it. Ranma immediately noted the presence of Satsuki's entourage, his eyes darting from Jumbo, standing perfectly straight with his hands behind his back at the side of the room, to Tiny, now sitting back in a plush looking seat, to "Kuno Number Two" (so named as such by Akane) sitting across from her, to… guy with blue hair that no name immediately sprung to mind for, sitting at an equally blue bar. Eventually Ranma's gaze settled on the back of the room, which was indeed elevated several steps above the rest of it. A set of large red curtains covered the entirety of the rear wall, in front of which sat Satsuki herself, seated in a pointed, high backed chair as if perched upon a throne.

"Welcome, Saotome. I've been waiting."

Ranma looked around, feeling all eyes in the room on him. "Didn't really know I was expected."

"My last piece of correspondence doubtless left you with many questions." Satsuki replied. "I rightfully assumed you would come looking for answers."

Ranma nodded in response. "Ya did kinda drop a lot on me without really explainin' much of it. Would be nice to know what I'm gettin' into here."

"Were you a normal student, you would be 'getting' into detention." Gamagori said from off to the side, his voice as unforgivingly strict as ever. "You're late."

"Wha- how can I be late? No one told me-"

"The Disciplinary Committee Chair is correct." Blue Hair noted, cutting Ranma off. "Those stairs are meant primarily as an entrance for one and two stars. In the future, take the elevator from the ground floor instead."

"Yeah, really. We've been sitting here for like 20 minutes." Kuno-Two added.

Ranma opened his mouth to continue protesting, given that he'd thought it was his own idea to come here to begin with, but slowly let it die in his throat and turned back to Satsuki instead.

"Uh, why are these guys here again?"

"Because they are the only others to know everything I am about to share with you." Satsuki replied. "If you were not already aware, this is Gamagori Ira, Inumuta Hoka, Jakuzure Nonon, and Sanageyama Uzu." she said, indicating each of them in turn. "They are the Elite Four- my most closely trusted subordinates."

"Yo!" Sanageyama said, giving Ranma a casual two fingered wave. Gamagori simply nodded in his direction, a gesture poorly replicated by Inumuta, who didn't even look up from the computer he was typing away at. Nonon didn't say anything and instead just smirked, subtly jabbing a baton at the miniature flight of steps in front of her leader's seat while staring Ranma dead in the eyes.

"…uh huh. Nice ta meet ya, I guess. I'm Saotome Ranma."

"They are aware." Satsuki said coolly, steepling her fingers. "Now then. If you are to assist us, you must understand what we face. Before we begin, I require your word that anything you hear in this room shall go no further than it. Do I have that, Saotome?"

Ranma gave it a moment of thought. He still wasn't sure why Satsuki considered all this secrecy so crucial, but given how important this supposedly was… "Yeah, I think I can give that. On my honor as a martial artist, I swear I won't repeat anything I hear in this room to anyone who ain't present. That good enough?"

"You may not disseminate the information by any other method either," Inumuta commented, "including writing, sign language, text-to-speech software, morse code, charades, semaphore, floriography-"

"Alright, I get the idea." Ranma said, nearly rolling his eyes. "It stays with me."

"Wait. Is your honor worthy of being sworn upon?" Sanageyama cut in, giving him a side-eyed, but strangely serious look.

Ranma turned towards the kendoist and returned the look with a slight glare. "It's one of the only things I got, so it better be."

Sanageyama seemed sufficiently mollified by that, and Satsuki nodded.

"It is enough. Let us begin."

The globes of light abruptly began vanishing as the curtains behind Satsuki drew back, revealing a huge number of computer monitors built into the wall. A few seconds later the final globe disappeared, casting the room into darkness for a few stark moments before the display screens all activated in tandem, each of them shining a bright, even white that together lit up the room like a searchlight. Ranma covered his eyes and squinted as he tried to look at Satsuki past the glare centered directly behind her. Just what did this girl have against other people being able to _see_?

"I shall begin by elaborating upon what I have already told you." Satsuki spoke as Ranma's eyes started to adjust.

The blank screens shifted to a wide variety of diagrams as multiple projectors of some sort began shining from somewhere inside the walls. Ranma almost jumped as a three dimensional hologram appeared at the center of the room, displaying a large spool of what appeared to be glowing red thread.

"These are what are known as **life fibers**. The single greatest danger that this world will ever know."

Ranma rubbed at his vision while he absorbed Satsuki's words, considering them seriously. After a few moments, he moved to look the projection over. He circled around, observing it from different angles. He stared at it intensely, squinting into the bright red mass. He even waved his hand through it a couple of times.

After about half a minute, Ranma stood up straight again, having come to a conclusion.

"Yep. Ya _definitely_ got the wrong holo-thing." he stated firmly. "Either that or my eyes went weird, cause all I'm seein' is a bunch a' weird lookin' string."

"Correct."

Ranma turned to give Satsuki a skeptical look. "The thing that's gonna destroy the world is _string_?"

"They are not merely string, Saotome." Satsuki replied, her tone unchanging. "Life fibers, as the name implies, are _alive_."

The display screens flipped over to a different set of diagrams as the hologram became a close up view of a singular red string, glowing brighter and brighter as something flowed into it from the humanoid figure it was wound around.

"Specifically, they are a parasitic entity that feeds off of the bio-energy of other organisms." Satsuki's eyes met Ranma's own, her gaze holding something that was not quite a glare, but had a definite intensity to it. "Their primary food source is humanity."

Ranma worked the words around in his head, trying to process that. "They… _eat_ people?"

Satsuki gave him a curt nod. "As the local species with the most highly evolved brains, a development the life fibers themselves spurred upon arriving on this planet, humans-"

"Wait wait wait." Ranma interrupted. "Arriving on this planet? Whatdya mean by-"

"Do not interrupt Lady Satsuki when she is speaking." Gamagori rumbled, somewhat hypocritically interrupting himself. Satsuki held up a hand, forestalling any further comments.

"Why do we wear clothing?" she asked aloud, looking pointedly at Ranma.

"Huh?"

"Why do humans wear clothing, Saotome?"

"Uh… I dunno. I guess we just sorta do?" Ranma scratched at the base of his pigtail, not sure what this had to do with anything. "I mean, we don't want everyone goin' around naked, right?"

A badly timed lack of clothing on both his part and others had certainly caused him no end of trouble in the past.

"Yet no other animal thinks so." Satsuki rebutted. "They care not of their nudity, and think nothing of it. So once more- why is it that humans, and humans alone, desire to cover themselves?"

"I… got no idea." Ranma admitted, figuring that none of the other functions clothing usually provided was likely to be the point being driven at here. Indeed, Satsuki seemed to have expected that he answer as such.

"Then I shall tell you."

The projection shifted again, this time to an image of what seemed to be a large red meteor, set on a course to strike the Earth from space. "As you may have gathered, life fibers are extraterrestrial in nature." Satsuki began. "Upon their arrival on a planet, they immediately seek out the local species with the highest intelligence to be their hosts. On Earth, this was humanity's evolutionary ancestor." The meteor and planet disappeared and became an upright, primate-like creature, looking dully forward as scarlet lines began crawling over its body.

"Life fibers create too much strain on other organisms to live inside their bodies while still keeping them alive. Instead, they cover a host's exterior and attach to its peripheral nervous system, allowing them to leech energy from the host's cells as sustenance." Satsuki's voice, always authoritative to begin with, seemed to harden even further as she continued. "Over time, the fibers will eventually enter a state of mass dormancy. Before doing so however, they will make subtle changes to their host's species DNA, making them smarter, stronger, driving their evolution forward while imbuing within them a persistent desire to cover themselves- an instinct that will eventually, inevitably lead to the creation of clothing."

This was sounding like the plot of some nutty science fiction movie. Though that was only distinguishable from the rest of Ranma's life in that it was usually more of a nutty martial arts movie with a side of the supernatural, so honestly it wasn't that much of a stretch.

"Today, millennia after this took place on Earth, humanity has grown to dominate the planet." The monitors changed to show pictures of people from all over the world, and the many various fashions thereof. "And by becoming so accustomed to the use of clothing, to the point that it is considered societally unacceptable to go without, we have created _exactly_ the type of future the life fibers desired of us."

Satsuki's gaze shifted away from the images and settled on Ranma again. "Are you following thus far?"

Ranma looked off to the side, honestly rather unsure if he was. "I… think I understood at least most a' that. Sorta."

"And do you believe it?" Satsuki questioned.

"Huh? Oh, sure, I'll buy the whole alien thing; Kami knows I've run into weirder stuff than that." Ranma replied, sounding much more confident about this answer than his first one, which earned him a few odd looks from the silent Elite Four. "I do got a question though."

"Ask."

"Well, I think I get what you're sayin' so far, but…" Ranma trailed off for a moment, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head. "…this kinda doesn't sound like all that bad a thing? I mean, you're makin' it sound like we might not even be here if these things hadn't shown up. Sure, I don't want anything suckin' the energy outta me neither, I get enough a' that from my English teacher, but if they ain't even around anymore I'm not really seein' the problem."

Satsuki closed her eyes, looking almost solemn. "To an extent, you are correct. It is true that we have life fibers to thank for humanity's evolution, as well as our current global supremacy." Quite abruptly, her eyes reopened, expression now set in the same piercing, unbreaking glare that had so unsettled Ranma during their fight. "But their dormancy is not an eternal state, and if we do not stop them, we will have them equally to thank for our species' extinction."

The monitors turned pure red, bathing the room in a color not at all unlike that of blood. The projection seemed to shift and coalesce around the light, becoming a human brain with shining red threads beginning to stretch themselves taught across it.

"Even in infinitesimal amounts, life fibers possess a certain degree of mental influence they can exert upon their host." Satsuki resumed, her tone as sharp as a blade. "Their time of inactivity is swiftly coming to a conclusion, and when it does they will arise in chorus and overtake the minds of mankind, striking so hard and fast that we will be near-helpless to fight back." The brain bulged and flattened to become an outside view of the Earth again, this time in the process of being enclosed by an enormous red sphere. "Once they have control of the majority of humanity, the fibers will use their captured hosts' collective energy to rise into the upper atmosphere and create a cocoon, one so large that it will envelop the entirety of Earth. They will then begin sapping the planet of all remaining energy it possesses, in order to create a new brood of young- a process of reproduction that will culminate with the fibers triggering the cocoon, along with the planet, to violently explode, launching them and their young into space to eventually repeat the process on countless other worlds."

In tandem with Satsuki's final sentence, the hologram dramatically shattered. Scarlet shards and lines flew outward in every direction, until the center of the room was left startlingly empty.

"…okay, yeah, that's pretty bad." Ranma conceded in the subsequent silence that filled the room. "Definitely ain't ever faced anything like that. But alive or not, these things are just threads, right?" he reasoned. "They can't be that tough, and ya said they're all still asleep right now. Couldn't we just… I dunno, find 'em before they wake up and set 'em all on fire or somethin'?"

A slow, single shake of the head was his answer. "Life fibers are far more durable than you realize, Saotome. You could place them in the core of a fire so hot its flames burn violet and not harm them in the slightest. Nothing save blades tempered by life fibers themselves are known to be able to cut them, and even then, they possess near unparalleled regenerative ability. As I said, they are a parasite, and parasites are nothing if not difficult to eliminate."

"Additionally, you seem to believe that the dormant fibers are located in a single, distinct place." Satsuki continued, her eyes slowly scanning over Ranma in his entirety. "This is false. For reasons I shall leave unsaid for the moment, there are almost certainly trace amounts in your clothing right now. Such is the case with roughly ninety percent of the world."

Ranma glanced down at his typical red silk shirt and loose black pants combo, suddenly unnerved. Wait, so if that was true, and even tiny amounts of life fibers could take over the minds of the people who wore them…

"I see that you understand." Satsuki stated, noticing Ranma's expression. "Their widespread presence is a crucial part of why the life fibers are so dangerous. When I said that their assault would come hard and fast, I perhaps understated myself- the life fibers' near universal pervasiveness within the clothing of the world means that when the time arrives, their takeover will be nigh instantaneous."

Satsuki suddenly stood up with her chin held high, seeming miles above the rest of the room. Ranma knew he could walk a few steps forward and be about on level with her, but it certainly didn't feel that way. "This is the threat we are faced with. Do you understand now, the strength of our opposition? The adversary that now breaks upon our shore is the very shaper of our species, one whose plans for us have been in motion for literally eons. The time we have had to plan any sort of counter-offensive is effectively nothing in comparison. We are _extremely_ outmatched."

The words hung thickly in the air, despite possessing a heaviness not dissimilar to lead weights. Ranma grimaced. "Well if it's that hopeless, what the heck are we supposed to do?"

"It is not hopeless." Satsuki stated firmly as she sat back down. "If the fibers' success was a foregone conclusion, you would not be here. I wished only to impress upon you the magnitude of what we plan to confront. We have an uphill battle, an uphill _war_ ahead. But I did not say we have no means of fighting back."

The entire room abruptly began to vibrate. Ranma quickly braced himself against a wall, while Satsuki simply kept speaking as if nothing was happening.

"We cannot combat the life fibers before they choose to emerge." she said as she stood and strode towards the room's sole entrance, which had apparently been blocked by a thick steel door at some point during the conversation. "But we can certainly prepare ourselves for when they do."

"Um, are we just not concerned about the earthquake, or…?"

"Effective methods of combating life fibers almost invariably utilize fibers themselves in some respect." Satsuki said, ignoring Ranma entirely as the room stopped rumbling and the door slid away, just in time to prevent her from walking directly into an unmoving sheet of metal. "Weapons such as my sword are both few in number and difficult to make, and while there are agents with which one can stiffen and paralyze life fibers, their effects are short lived and wholly inefficient. What we have instead chosen to use has proved effective, simple to use, and relatively easy to mass produce."

None of the room's other occupants were getting up, but as one they gestured for Ranma to follow their leader out the door. Doing so, he found himself on a narrow walkway, underneath which laid a massive factory floor. Figures in blue-colored hazmat suits scurried around far below, working together to interweave garment after garment with shining crimson threads.

"We call them **Goku Uniforms**."

* * *

AN: Another primarily Ranma chapter, and wow was this one long. I thought about cutting it off with "Let us begin" and going to another scene so I could just cut back once Ranma had the gist of things, but this encounter felt too important for that, long or not. Definitely wasn't easy to write- I'm best at humor I think, and while I tried to make it entertaining while still keeping everything mostly in character, Satsuki is not one to joke around in this sort of scenario, so the last bit ended up pretty serious all the same. Hopefully the scene at least comes through well.

Slight nod to another Trigger series in this chapter; points if you spotted it.

On another note, hey look, it's Omiko! I have a few ideas for some of the two star students down the road, Miss Tennis Club President included… even if she isn't a two star just yet (which is a shame, the encounter was funnier before I remembered that). Doesn't make her totally helpless though, as one star uniforms are not useless no matter how little use we see made of them in the show, and she did stand out amongst the other one stars enough to be Tennis Club President, presumably due to her skill (or perhaps it was just her being unique among a sea of one-star clones). Hence her casual displays of throwing power, accuracy, and angle usage this chapter.

Mousse and Ryoga vs. Ryuko: I figured that Ryuko probably would want to fight these two at some point, if just to see how she stacks up, so this was always going to happen. Unfortunately, while she's fairly clever when she needs to be, she doesn't have Senketsu to help yet, her life fiber abilities aren't active, and the sum total of her fighting experience up until now has been street brawling- there was no way she was going to win. Still, she gave a pretty good showing, I think. Ryoga and Mousse are also kind of _weird_ to write when they're definitively in control of a fight. Seems almost OOC. I guess it's the nature of the fight itself, in that they don't really want it, but know they'll win if they really try. What a weird circumstance for these two extremely powerful martial artists to find themselves in, huh?

...and that's TWO weirdass police forces I've made for this crossover. I don't think there'll be any more, but I make no guarantees. This one is based on Kofu's Shingen-ko Festival (the world's largest gathering of samurai), and exists because… well, recall the Tri-City School Raids that Satsuki conducts in KLK. Something like this seemed practically obligatory, especially if we're meshing that universe with Ranma ½, which had a great many weird things come into and take place outside of Nerima. So yeah.


End file.
